I agree with this and have posted numerous comments here to that effect, particularly on the value of intent (with respect to the effectiveness of online advertising).
Th attitude of "eyeballs not revenue" and finding that repeatable, scalable formula are almost a religion on HN and in startups. It's generally a strategy I approve of.
Even dropping 20% since the IPO (currently trading at just over $30 as I write this; and bear in mind that even Groupon--at least initially--enjoyed a nice IPO bounce), the company is trading at a huge P/E ratio.
I get why this is: it's speculative. FB is still viewed as a growth company and the speculators feel that there is huge unrealised monetization potential.
I remain a skeptic regarding the value of "social" in advertising. The OP is right: all this data just means--maybe--a slightly higher CTR, at which point Facebook is just another display ad network and that doesn't justify their valuation.
As an aside, IMHO Twitter is in this same "put up or shut up" boat. I don't believe Facebook is doomed (IMHO Twitter is). I just believe the value of the data silo they have is both overstated and transitory (at some point--one way or the other--Facebook won't be the gatekeeper to your profile and social graph).
Facebook has done a lot of things right as a business (the Like button being foremost among those IMHO). Personally I believe their biggest mistake was spurning Apple: Apple wanted to use Facebook for their Ping boondoggle.
Disclaimer: I work for Google in display advertising.
I'm confused over the significance of the P/E ratio. It seemed like a big deal when I was reading these stories about the FB IPO, but then I got to look at other ratios in tech. Amazon's is much higher than FB's 93.72 at 175.23 [0]
1 - fb has the potential to be the first serious adsense competitor: slightly poorer context data (though they certainly can repeat much of the work google has done, and I bet bing would love to do a data deal with them) but much better data about the user. Adsense earns roughly $10B/ year; ex my quick guess at tac (23% from 2009q4) and adsense makes $7.7B/year net. FB stands to take a bunch of that if they wish. They still are trying to invent new types of social advertising, and it would certainly be weird if facebook.com was just a giant data honeypot, but they have the data and the technical ability. And the demand from pubs is certainly there: pubs love anyone who pays them.
2 - anybody citing GM pulling $10M in annual spend is an idiot, unless you think GM is in the business of sending out press releases announcing all of their advertising budget changes. No? Then there's something else going on here; perhaps some bare-knuckled negotiation tactics.
3 - fb collects a tax on gaming. Plus Zynga and some others may be cleared to start doing online poker for real money [1]. fb taxes that at 30%.
4 - low ctr is fine for direct response as long as you have proportionally low costs. What this does for the user experience is another question =P
5 - lots of people in adtech very much want Google not to win everything. See the rise of the ABG (anybody but google) exchange: appnexus + aol + microsoft [2]. I expect yahoo inventory to start showing up there once yahoo realizes they no longer have the technical ability to run an ad exchange. Scott talking about selling off rmx can't have helped retain technical talent, and at this point it's a fat question why anyone would want it. Yahoo will sell a bunch of guaranteed delivery, but I think a bunch of the rest will show up on appnexus eventually, if it isn't already there blind.
5a - contributing to the above, hopefully google will get investigated for antitrust. For starters, hiding search query terms in the referrer string should trigger an investigation. They use that data in adsense, and it's particularly valuable for targeting ads on low text pages. Now they're hiding that from other ad networks, I can't find any public statement guaranteeing they're not letting adsense see it. Google also uses search query results to juice display retargeting.
6 - ctr isn't particularly important for brand advertisers. There is a growing disparity of the ratios of ad spend / time spent in different media, with TV higher. Thus behind some of fb's valuation is the thesis that brand advertising dollars will be moving from tv to online, and fb is probably poised to take a big chunk of those. If/when this happens is unknown, but winning bets on those sorts of things is how investors get paid.
7 - fb may still be given a giant present from the EU depending on just how their anti cookie laws work in practice. The morons in GB rolled it all back 24h before the implementation deadline, but other member states may go all in and more or less ban 3rd party cookies. Then we'll be stuck in a tagless world, and I bet fb will get an enormous amount of spend.
For me, this is the strongest case yet for niche social networks being the future of social media. FB is too broad and demographics tell you little about the people you are speaking too unless you can inject some sort of context.
If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be more viable, and more useful to the audience.
I also think that when you look past all the fanfare and hyperbole surrounding social networking, what you're left with is really sophisticated bulletin boards and forums.
I can see that from a marketing point of view, having one point of access to that many people might seem like a dream come true, but the numbers are suggesting that's not the case at all. Facebook is not the answer to an online advertisers dream. I don't think it ever will be.
For me, this is the strongest case yet for niche social networks being the future of social media. FB is too broad and demographics tell you little about the people you are speaking too unless you can inject some sort of context.
If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be more viable, and more useful to the audience.
You don't need DSNP: niche social networks already exist. Ravelry and GoodReads, as examples, seem to be making a decent go of it. Would love to know how their advertising does.
Facebook's advertising model is a simple classical displaying advertising model. It need be disrupted seriously. Nowadays, the most popular marketing model is displaying advertising model, which is actually an attention-driven marketing model. However, no matter how good they are context-awared and personalized, they are always guesswork, which can hardly achieve high relevancy. It is extremely difficult to guess users’ actual intention for most cases, even you may have a lot of information of them. For example, it is super difficult to guess what an individual is exactly looking to buy when he walks into a Trader Joe’s, no matter how much information you obtained on him, like his income, profession, age, education and etc. Users’ intentions are always dynamically changing from time to time. There are no general equations that can perfectly predict people’s intentions. As a result, no matter how perfectly a system can attract attentions, attention-driven marketing can never achieve high efficiency and accuracy.
As a matter of fact, nowadays advertisement industry is the biggest bubble of the world. Every year, trillions of dollars completely wasted by irrelevant advertising unnecessarily. What is even worse is, the user experience is badly hurt by ads and spams. Such marketing system can be called as attention-driven marketing system. Everything is done to attract attentions. However, only a few attentions are really attracted, but majority of the attentions may not be finally turned into intentions. As a result, majority of the marketing costs are totally wasted.
The future marketing systems will be built on intentions. Intention-driven commerce systems need let every user to express his/her intentions freely and help him/her achieve his/her intentions in highly optimized way by socialization and crowd-sourcing. The future world needs to be a world without displaying ads, but only pure relevant information that matches users' intentions dynamically and real-timely. This is the very objective of my current startup project as well.
How do you promote events in your non-bubble view of the world? An event can be in person (imagine TechCrunch Disrupt for instance), or a new TV series launching...
I can imagine very well how I would target people who like the series 24 if I'm launching a new thriller. Or readers of Hacker News for a tech conference. Etc...
Do you seriously believe advertisers waste trillions of dollars? That not a single one has turned off ads in a geo-fenced area to see what happens? Or that adwords advertisers (and all direct response advertisers for that matter) don't fanatically track roas?
Also, empirically, users refuse to pay for stuff and want advertising so they're not out of pocket. For the 1e6 + 999th time: " If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
Facebook is gathering what amounts to a static picture of each user then selling ads based on the pictures. There really isn't a time component in the data (though perhaps they can add one now that the service has existed for many years).
On the other hand, Google has more or less assembled a bunch of archetypes based on behavior (people who search for X later purchase Y, etc.). Then they match queries to these archetypes. The time component is front-and-center here because the archetype match was prompted by a user action.
A purchase is really a time-related event that transforms the user in some sense. By purchasing something you're changing "who" you are from the perspective of an advertiser (e.g. a Chevy driver could become an Audi driver).
So Facebook has a great picture of "who" each user is at a the moment, but no real way of knowing "who" each user would like to become or when. Hence, perhaps, some of their difficulty in selling ads.
Google dominates (1) and I assume Facebook is trying to dominate (2) which includes a lot more display advertising (and TV, and billboards). Facebook probably thinks a lot of demand-driving advertising can be accomplished through viral online marketing through FB platforms and they are likely trying to exploit these channels with services for paying customers.
Imagine paying Facebook to simulate something being trendy among people's trend-setting friends. It'll be a fine line but this must be what they hope to do.
Agree the $100B is too high, but certainly they're easily a profitable company, long-term.
> 1) ones that give you what you want
> 2) ones that drive demand
A big part of Google's success is that #1 is much easier to prove than #2.
"People bought our product more because they had become familiar with it over the last month via newspaper/radio/Facebook ads" is a hard-to-prove claim.
"We got X clicks from Google ads leading directly to Y purchases" is much easier.
Not trying to defend the viability of FB ads here, but this analysis seems a little shallow. Falling within a certain demographic may not "make" you click an ad, but the same could be said of performing a search on Google. If circumstance Y makes one want to buy a product, then as long as falling within demographic X is correlated with being in Y, targeting X could be a good idea. It is (obviously) the reason why toy commercials air during children's shows and not during basketball games.
I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense.
Advertising on the Facebook site itself seems not to be working, but I could foresee a situation where website owners allow Facebook to display ads on their site for a fee per click just like AdSense. Facebook already has a javascript presence on many, many websites already.
I used to think this as well, but there's a problem. What if FB ads are not as good a monetization solution for publishers as Google ads? This seems quite possible.
Facebook advertising is much much cheaper than Google advertising on a per-click and per-impression basis.
With Google ads, advertisers are used to paying as much as $20/click in some areas. I've never heard of a FB advertiser paying more than $2/click.
Likewise, CPMs on FB are in the single digit pennies quite often. On the web, banner ads are around $0.75 CPMs for decent sites.
Facebook might have looked at this and might believe that if they launched a network like this, the payouts just wouldn't be able to compete with what Google's able to give publishers.
Wow. Its like you just read my mind! I was about to say the same thing.
Indeed, especially since there are a lots of apps out there implementing Facebook login, especially mobile apps, games and apps alike, could this be a solution to their mobile strategy? (this is not a rhetorical question.)
Whats stopping them from implementing this?
I've never had good results from ticking the box for Google's display network in AdWords campaigns. The culprit is poor implementation by webmasters, not the amount or detail of data available. I don't see why a Facebook display network would do any better.
They'll do it as soon as they are confident that they can pay websites more per click than AdSense. It's a winner-take-all market.
But AdSense is very vulnerable: intent (the search string), which is the one reason Google advertising works, is absent from AdSense.
As an example, I once wrote a blog post with a title like "startup financing: take the elevator, not the stairs". Google placed ads on that post for Thyssen elevators. It had just no clue that the topic was startups, not actual elevators. Not impressed.
I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense.
Maybe that is/was one of the aims behind the Like button? Facebook could use that connection to tailor the adverts displayed to the user (along with the site's content!), provided the user is logged into Facebook at the time.
Admittedly, I think doing so would kick up a bit of a stink ;)
I agree that Google can target alot better IF you have a product that solves a problem people search for. IF.
> What researchers discovered was that people bought milkshakes as a breakfast replacement because it was entertaining during a long, boring commute, and would keep them full until lunch.
How do you advertise for them on Google? If they search for "breakfast replacement for long, boring commute"?
For anyone who can match their product to search queries, Google is the way to go, agreed. But not all products can, because people are not actively looking for solving a problem/need that your product solves.
If I look at my current facebook ads, these are not things I actively search for, e.g. drinks, shavers, parties, facebook games, ... If I had to spend marketing $ on these, I'd probably choose facebook ads over AdWords as well.
Ever since FB has gone public, I've noticed so much 'negative' stories/comments, and I really wonder why these are only coming out now... FB has been around for a long time and nothing has changed in its marketing strategies since it seems.
Personally, I don't have a FB account, or own any stock but this targeted 'bashing' seems useless and has the smell of targeted anti-FB propaganda. Why don't we focus on the real issue being people rights to privacy and the shady practices of FB?
More focus on the real issues please, do not get distracted by the 'anti-hype' of the week.
>"Why don't we focus on the real issue being people rights to privacy and the shady practices of FB?"
These things are all connected. The public is being sold the idea that this is a $100BB company, one of the biggest in the world. Yet when some of us look at it (yourself, even) we see a great tool that doesn't justify the price as a business: as cletus says at the top of the thread, Facebook may just be another ad network that depends on its massive, engaged user base. Yet FB has problems with how it actually treats those users, through privacy issues and shady practices..
I am so glad that email didn't depend on advertising to eventually support itself "sometime in the future." Email is useful to me as email, and useful to my providers as a billed service.
I call survivor bias. Historically, the only player in online advertising is Google, which is 100%-focused on intent-based advertising. So the article, logically concludes that intent is the only way to advertise (despite decades of TV and radio ads).
Some products do great with intent-based advertising. Other products (that you didn't even know you needed) need other forms of advertising.
Google's ads are better because you have intention when you are searching. That's not true when you are checking into Facebook to see what other people are doing. Are there other times when people use Facebook and they have some intent? Planning an event, or asking a question, those come to mind.
This argument continues to come up, but I don't buy it- At least not without some data.
My personal anecdote: Facebook ads are the only online Ads I click with any regularity. They are targeted to my interests, such as programming. They also hit me at a time when I am mostly bored and clicking around on anything that interests me.
When I find myself on Google, I am on a mission for very specific information. Even if I am shopping, I do a research phase and a purchasing phase. Ads in the research phase don't woo me. I google straight to trusted sources. Once I'm in the purchase phase (shopping for best price), I am not wooed either because the ads are too broad. E.G, I want the D3100, not just any camera in general.
I completely understand Google's strategy of "intent" based ads. I just think Facebook's user data is even stronger.
You are mistaken to think that the search-engine show-people-what-they-were-searching-for-anyway kind of advertisement is the only kind of advertisement that can work on the internet.
I used to work for Hyves, which was until a year ago or something the biggest social network in the Netherlands. Hyves lost to Facebook in terms of number of users, but something that they did do right was modernization. Hyves had an in-house sales team and studio, which sold custom viral campaigns to cooperate advertisers. These campaigns could usually go together with a TV campaign and/or other media.
For some products search engine advertisement is the right kind of advertisement (parrot secrets, maybe cars, I don't know), for others not such much (food stuffs for example).
But consider Facebook's "friction-less sharing". Facebook now knows you just listened to a song, read and article, took a trip, had a baby, got married....
I listen to Donovan, The Beatles, The Stone Roses, Mozart, Au, REM, Dj Shadow, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Chopin, Ludovico Einaudi and Daft Punk (to name but a few).
I've liked pages for five star greek hotels, the burger place on the corner, the guy who sells awesome falafel's on Hoxton market. You know I saw this video of a talking dog that I thought was totally awesome.
Just this month, I read an article on the Greek debt crisis in the economist, an article on David Beckham in the Daily mail website, I shared a wikipedia page about Rommel, I liked an article about continuous integration with node.js and Jenkins.
Now sell me a car.
I actually like Volkswagens and Volvos, but you won't find that anywhere in my Facebook data.
It does seem obvious. There is just a wall of hype hanging. And factor in the fact that it was reported that approximately 40 % of all social network accounts are created by spammers.
[+] [-] cletus|14 years ago|reply
Th attitude of "eyeballs not revenue" and finding that repeatable, scalable formula are almost a religion on HN and in startups. It's generally a strategy I approve of.
Even dropping 20% since the IPO (currently trading at just over $30 as I write this; and bear in mind that even Groupon--at least initially--enjoyed a nice IPO bounce), the company is trading at a huge P/E ratio.
I get why this is: it's speculative. FB is still viewed as a growth company and the speculators feel that there is huge unrealised monetization potential.
I remain a skeptic regarding the value of "social" in advertising. The OP is right: all this data just means--maybe--a slightly higher CTR, at which point Facebook is just another display ad network and that doesn't justify their valuation.
As an aside, IMHO Twitter is in this same "put up or shut up" boat. I don't believe Facebook is doomed (IMHO Twitter is). I just believe the value of the data silo they have is both overstated and transitory (at some point--one way or the other--Facebook won't be the gatekeeper to your profile and social graph).
Facebook has done a lot of things right as a business (the Like button being foremost among those IMHO). Personally I believe their biggest mistake was spurning Apple: Apple wanted to use Facebook for their Ping boondoggle.
Disclaimer: I work for Google in display advertising.
[+] [-] RegEx|14 years ago|reply
[0]: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AMZN&authuser=0
[+] [-] earl|14 years ago|reply
2 - anybody citing GM pulling $10M in annual spend is an idiot, unless you think GM is in the business of sending out press releases announcing all of their advertising budget changes. No? Then there's something else going on here; perhaps some bare-knuckled negotiation tactics.
3 - fb collects a tax on gaming. Plus Zynga and some others may be cleared to start doing online poker for real money [1]. fb taxes that at 30%.
4 - low ctr is fine for direct response as long as you have proportionally low costs. What this does for the user experience is another question =P
5 - lots of people in adtech very much want Google not to win everything. See the rise of the ABG (anybody but google) exchange: appnexus + aol + microsoft [2]. I expect yahoo inventory to start showing up there once yahoo realizes they no longer have the technical ability to run an ad exchange. Scott talking about selling off rmx can't have helped retain technical talent, and at this point it's a fat question why anyone would want it. Yahoo will sell a bunch of guaranteed delivery, but I think a bunch of the rest will show up on appnexus eventually, if it isn't already there blind.
5a - contributing to the above, hopefully google will get investigated for antitrust. For starters, hiding search query terms in the referrer string should trigger an investigation. They use that data in adsense, and it's particularly valuable for targeting ads on low text pages. Now they're hiding that from other ad networks, I can't find any public statement guaranteeing they're not letting adsense see it. Google also uses search query results to juice display retargeting.
6 - ctr isn't particularly important for brand advertisers. There is a growing disparity of the ratios of ad spend / time spent in different media, with TV higher. Thus behind some of fb's valuation is the thesis that brand advertising dollars will be moving from tv to online, and fb is probably poised to take a big chunk of those. If/when this happens is unknown, but winning bets on those sorts of things is how investors get paid.
7 - fb may still be given a giant present from the EU depending on just how their anti cookie laws work in practice. The morons in GB rolled it all back 24h before the implementation deadline, but other member states may go all in and more or less ban 3rd party cookies. Then we'll be stuck in a tagless world, and I bet fb will get an enormous amount of spend.
[1] http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/the-deanbeat-should-zynga-...
[2] http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/aol-make-inventory-ava...
[+] [-] tomelders|14 years ago|reply
If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be more viable, and more useful to the audience.
I also think that when you look past all the fanfare and hyperbole surrounding social networking, what you're left with is really sophisticated bulletin boards and forums.
I can see that from a marketing point of view, having one point of access to that many people might seem like a dream come true, but the numbers are suggesting that's not the case at all. Facebook is not the answer to an online advertisers dream. I don't think it ever will be.
[+] [-] ajdecon|14 years ago|reply
If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be more viable, and more useful to the audience.
You don't need DSNP: niche social networks already exist. Ravelry and GoodReads, as examples, seem to be making a decent go of it. Would love to know how their advertising does.
[+] [-] kevinlu310|14 years ago|reply
As a matter of fact, nowadays advertisement industry is the biggest bubble of the world. Every year, trillions of dollars completely wasted by irrelevant advertising unnecessarily. What is even worse is, the user experience is badly hurt by ads and spams. Such marketing system can be called as attention-driven marketing system. Everything is done to attract attentions. However, only a few attentions are really attracted, but majority of the attentions may not be finally turned into intentions. As a result, majority of the marketing costs are totally wasted.
The future marketing systems will be built on intentions. Intention-driven commerce systems need let every user to express his/her intentions freely and help him/her achieve his/her intentions in highly optimized way by socialization and crowd-sourcing. The future world needs to be a world without displaying ads, but only pure relevant information that matches users' intentions dynamically and real-timely. This is the very objective of my current startup project as well.
[+] [-] alain94040|14 years ago|reply
I can imagine very well how I would target people who like the series 24 if I'm launching a new thriller. Or readers of Hacker News for a tech conference. Etc...
[+] [-] earl|14 years ago|reply
Also, empirically, users refuse to pay for stuff and want advertising so they're not out of pocket. For the 1e6 + 999th time: " If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
[+] [-] glesica|14 years ago|reply
Facebook is gathering what amounts to a static picture of each user then selling ads based on the pictures. There really isn't a time component in the data (though perhaps they can add one now that the service has existed for many years).
On the other hand, Google has more or less assembled a bunch of archetypes based on behavior (people who search for X later purchase Y, etc.). Then they match queries to these archetypes. The time component is front-and-center here because the archetype match was prompted by a user action.
A purchase is really a time-related event that transforms the user in some sense. By purchasing something you're changing "who" you are from the perspective of an advertiser (e.g. a Chevy driver could become an Audi driver).
So Facebook has a great picture of "who" each user is at a the moment, but no real way of knowing "who" each user would like to become or when. Hence, perhaps, some of their difficulty in selling ads.
Or not.
[+] [-] redwood|14 years ago|reply
1) ones that give you what you want
2) ones that drive demand
Google dominates (1) and I assume Facebook is trying to dominate (2) which includes a lot more display advertising (and TV, and billboards). Facebook probably thinks a lot of demand-driving advertising can be accomplished through viral online marketing through FB platforms and they are likely trying to exploit these channels with services for paying customers.
Imagine paying Facebook to simulate something being trendy among people's trend-setting friends. It'll be a fine line but this must be what they hope to do.
Agree the $100B is too high, but certainly they're easily a profitable company, long-term.
[+] [-] billybob|14 years ago|reply
A big part of Google's success is that #1 is much easier to prove than #2.
"People bought our product more because they had become familiar with it over the last month via newspaper/radio/Facebook ads" is a hard-to-prove claim.
"We got X clicks from Google ads leading directly to Y purchases" is much easier.
[+] [-] mag487|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helipad|14 years ago|reply
Advertising on the Facebook site itself seems not to be working, but I could foresee a situation where website owners allow Facebook to display ads on their site for a fee per click just like AdSense. Facebook already has a javascript presence on many, many websites already.
[+] [-] brandnewlow|14 years ago|reply
Facebook advertising is much much cheaper than Google advertising on a per-click and per-impression basis.
With Google ads, advertisers are used to paying as much as $20/click in some areas. I've never heard of a FB advertiser paying more than $2/click.
Likewise, CPMs on FB are in the single digit pennies quite often. On the web, banner ads are around $0.75 CPMs for decent sites.
Facebook might have looked at this and might believe that if they launched a network like this, the payouts just wouldn't be able to compete with what Google's able to give publishers.
[+] [-] AznHisoka|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shinchan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alain94040|14 years ago|reply
But AdSense is very vulnerable: intent (the search string), which is the one reason Google advertising works, is absent from AdSense.
As an example, I once wrote a blog post with a title like "startup financing: take the elevator, not the stairs". Google placed ads on that post for Thyssen elevators. It had just no clue that the topic was startups, not actual elevators. Not impressed.
[+] [-] mootothemax|14 years ago|reply
Maybe that is/was one of the aims behind the Like button? Facebook could use that connection to tailor the adverts displayed to the user (along with the site's content!), provided the user is logged into Facebook at the time.
Admittedly, I think doing so would kick up a bit of a stink ;)
[+] [-] CookWithMe|14 years ago|reply
> What researchers discovered was that people bought milkshakes as a breakfast replacement because it was entertaining during a long, boring commute, and would keep them full until lunch.
How do you advertise for them on Google? If they search for "breakfast replacement for long, boring commute"?
For anyone who can match their product to search queries, Google is the way to go, agreed. But not all products can, because people are not actively looking for solving a problem/need that your product solves.
If I look at my current facebook ads, these are not things I actively search for, e.g. drinks, shavers, parties, facebook games, ... If I had to spend marketing $ on these, I'd probably choose facebook ads over AdWords as well.
[+] [-] kelvin0|14 years ago|reply
Personally, I don't have a FB account, or own any stock but this targeted 'bashing' seems useless and has the smell of targeted anti-FB propaganda. Why don't we focus on the real issue being people rights to privacy and the shady practices of FB?
More focus on the real issues please, do not get distracted by the 'anti-hype' of the week.
[+] [-] tatsuke95|14 years ago|reply
These things are all connected. The public is being sold the idea that this is a $100BB company, one of the biggest in the world. Yet when some of us look at it (yourself, even) we see a great tool that doesn't justify the price as a business: as cletus says at the top of the thread, Facebook may just be another ad network that depends on its massive, engaged user base. Yet FB has problems with how it actually treats those users, through privacy issues and shady practices..
[+] [-] antidoh|14 years ago|reply
Yes, they're different things.
[+] [-] alain94040|14 years ago|reply
Some products do great with intent-based advertising. Other products (that you didn't even know you needed) need other forms of advertising.
[+] [-] pbharrin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinshark|14 years ago|reply
My personal anecdote: Facebook ads are the only online Ads I click with any regularity. They are targeted to my interests, such as programming. They also hit me at a time when I am mostly bored and clicking around on anything that interests me.
When I find myself on Google, I am on a mission for very specific information. Even if I am shopping, I do a research phase and a purchasing phase. Ads in the research phase don't woo me. I google straight to trusted sources. Once I'm in the purchase phase (shopping for best price), I am not wooed either because the ads are too broad. E.G, I want the D3100, not just any camera in general.
I completely understand Google's strategy of "intent" based ads. I just think Facebook's user data is even stronger.
[+] [-] ma2rten|14 years ago|reply
I used to work for Hyves, which was until a year ago or something the biggest social network in the Netherlands. Hyves lost to Facebook in terms of number of users, but something that they did do right was modernization. Hyves had an in-house sales team and studio, which sold custom viral campaigns to cooperate advertisers. These campaigns could usually go together with a TV campaign and/or other media.
For some products search engine advertisement is the right kind of advertisement (parrot secrets, maybe cars, I don't know), for others not such much (food stuffs for example).
[+] [-] amitvaria|14 years ago|reply
Now think of the targeting you can get there.
[+] [-] tomelders|14 years ago|reply
I listen to Donovan, The Beatles, The Stone Roses, Mozart, Au, REM, Dj Shadow, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Chopin, Ludovico Einaudi and Daft Punk (to name but a few).
I've liked pages for five star greek hotels, the burger place on the corner, the guy who sells awesome falafel's on Hoxton market. You know I saw this video of a talking dog that I thought was totally awesome.
Just this month, I read an article on the Greek debt crisis in the economist, an article on David Beckham in the Daily mail website, I shared a wikipedia page about Rommel, I liked an article about continuous integration with node.js and Jenkins.
Now sell me a car.
I actually like Volkswagens and Volvos, but you won't find that anywhere in my Facebook data.
[+] [-] sp332|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fakhrazeyev|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] torstesu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xero_cuil|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikecane|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3lit3H4ck3r|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suking|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mbailey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajpaul|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]