Facebook’s Social Ad Network To Be Announced

Just as Google is preparing to take Facebook head-on with its own social-networking platform, it appears that Facebook is preparing to take on Google with its own social ad network. The announcement of what people are already calling SocialAds is expected next week on November 6. What is SocialAds? We’ll have to wait for the actual announcement to see, but here is what we know so far (or think we know): It will be how Facebook will actually start to make real money—both through ads on its own site and on other sites through a new ad network it is about to launch (presumably with its ad partner and new investor Microsoft). SocialAds will be an attempt to be like Google’s AdSense, except that it will allow ads to be targeted to Facebook members’ individual interests and profile data rather than the text on a given Web page. This targeting will be done by placing cookies on Facebook members’ browsers when they visit the social site, so that they can be identified later when they visit other sites hosting SocialAds. Facebook is already experimenting with targeting ads on its own site (through its Facebook Flyers program) based on demographic and psychographic data that it culls from members’ profiles. With SocialAds, it will be able to extend that targeting across the Web. It remains to be seen whether targeting ads based on people’s self-expressed interests and demographics will result in better response rates than contextual ads like AdSense or search ads based on the specific intent of what people are looking for at that very second. What will be really interesting to see is what form these ads will take, and will they become social applications in and of themselves that spread virally like a Facebook app? It will also be interesting to see whether Facebook launches this social ad network on its own, or with its ad partner Microsoft.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/facebooks-social-ad-network-what-we-think-we-know-so-far/