Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled Facebook Ads, his company's plans to take on the heavyweights of online advertising. Speaking before some of the company's biggest sponsors in New York, Zuckerberg said:
"Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online. For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they're going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do."
The company is launching Facebook Pages, a new feature for brands, local businesses, and musicians to promote themselves. This is pretty much in-line with some speculation we caught wind of on Friday. At launch, there are already more than 100,000 pages set to go live. Pages will feature standard features of Facebook profiles, allowing users to add comments, write on the brand's wall, and post photos. Admins for Pages will also be able to add applications to them, potentially putting them in direct competition with existing third-party apps. These actions are of course shared throughout Facebook's mini-feed and News Feed features to encourage viral marketing.
As for "Social Ads," the must speculated on ad network that Facebook has been reportedly building? They are the second piece of the puzzle, and will import data into Facebook on actions you take outside the network, such as purchasing a product or viewing a video on an external site. eBay is one of the major partners for this part of the project (called “Beacon”) and will allow users to import a list of their items and share it in their feeds. Another example is ExpoTV, who will notify your Facebook friends if you upload a video review to their site or add a product to your wish list. Privacy settings will allow users to determine what type of data is shared.
Finally, for advertisers Facebook will be providing them with detailed data on the users they are reaching. For example, demographics, user activity, and performance of the ads. This probably the most innovative part of the announcement, as it gives advertisers incredible insight into their customers and their interests.
What’s missing from the announcement are how Microsoft might be involved in the ad network, and the much-rumored idea that Facebook would be using member data to display ads both within its site and on third-party publishers. The inclusion of bands in the “Pages” concept seems in-line with the rumors about Facebook Music that we’ve also heard recently.
My first take is that all of this is a little underwhelming when compared with the earlier speculation that Facebook was launching a major AdSense competitor. The “Pages” concept doesn’t sound much different that the profiles bands, movies, and brands setup on MySpace, and while it will be a nice revenue generator for Facebook, it’s certainly not revolutionary. More details and analysis certainly to follow soon.
User comment: By: Jeffro2pt0ROFL, good one.
User comment: By: garyYikes! "Gary just ordered the extra large ribbed monster vibrator from eBay" :)
User comment: By: ThiloI have visited their press release and at the bottom it says for more information go to ... I tried it and it didn't work, they should at least set up the link befor they send press releases.
User comment: By: Adam OstrowThe thing is for us "in the know" we'll immediately adjust the privacy settings if we want to. I have a feeling most of my friends not in the Web world 24x7 wouldn't pay much attention and probably not know what they're getting themselves into, until something embarassing happened.
User comment: By: Cameron ChapmanAs long as there are privacy settings, it doesn't really bother me. But it could be kinda creepy. I don't think I really want to know some of the things that my friends are probably ordering. Could be awkward and embarrassing...
User comment: By: Jeffro2pt0Yet lifestreaming everything else via other services is not?
[...] Social Ads and Project Beacon have finally arrived. You probably can't tell through this text, but you should know that it's with [...]
User comment: By: Adam OstrowHehe ... one thing missing from this news is ANY good stuff for users. Letting my whole network know what I buy on eBay is kinda creepy.
User comment: By: Jeffro2pt0One of these days, we'll look back and say, "Remember When Facebook was the king of the news" then we'll say "Yeah, until their userbase imploded"
User comment: By: Anonymous[...] Labs! Mashable is hosted by (mt) Media Temple « Previous Post [...]
User comment: By: Facebook presenta Social Ads[...] e íntimamente relacionadas con ellos, es en verdad innovador. Fuente: Facebook Press Room - Mashable Prohibida su copia total con o sin fines comerciales. Copias parciales deben citar la fuente. [...]
[...] like Adam at Mashable has noticed, this really doesn't sound that exciting, especially from the user's [...]
[...] Source:Mashable! Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled Facebook Ads, his company's plans to take on the heavyweights of online advertising. Speaking before some of the company's biggest sponsors in New York, Zuckerberg said: "Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online. For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, […] Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
User comment: By: greasyguideUnclutter My Facebook! No more apps, no more ads in my feed, leave me the hell alone.
User comment: By: NameTaking the link http://www.facebook.com/ads/ directly from their press release as of 4 p.m. EST on November 6: The page you requested was not found. Oops. This and other not well thought out things make me wonder about the long term viability of Facebook. For example, with their current Flyers system, you can't update/change your credit card without either completely deleting all of your campaigns, or pausing them and waiting however long it takes for them to get around to posting their bill to your existing credit card. There's also the myriad of user complaints about little things that would take one programmer less than two minutes to fix. For example, several hundred thousand people have joined groups petitioning Facebook to remove the word "is" from the status update feature.
User comment: By: JoshHow can I see one of these Facebook Pages? I can't find them. Can someone post a link to an example? Thanks!
User comment: By: MarkI have read several articles on this topic both on techcrunch.com and businesshackers.com To me it doesn't really matter whether it is going to launch Facebook Pages.
User comment: By: Adam OstrowWell, no ads at all are better than nothing, for users anyhow :) But yea, it feels underwhelming so far from a strategy perspective.
User comment: By: Adam OstrowYea, it sounds quite creepy. Letting my friends know that I ordered x, y, and z from Amazon doesn't sound very appealing. Could also totally spoil the surprise of a birthday gift or something.
User comment: By: devin hollowayI predicted this in my blog on Sunday. I think next we'll probably see some backlash from users about this being 'creepy' just like when the News Feed became public, but in the end it will be very useful. And since advertisers/marketers/etc are going to save a lot of marketing money (50% of the cost is usually marketing related) it would be nice if they passed along those savings.
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: Noah EverettI am a little deflated by what they announced. I was hoping for something a little more "adsense" like. Although its better than nothing.