Social Ads - the next move from Facebook
While we wonder if Facebook will join OpenSocial, it seems that Facebook has other things on its plate. Next week Facebook will be launching its Social Ads advertising service, which takes the Facebook ads outside the social network, and allows third party sites to run them. Interesting. It’s Facebook’s very own version of Google Adsense, and will take Facebook and Google into an even more competitive position vis-a-vis one another.
The whole thing will not actually be unveiled until November 6th, but it looks like it will work in a similar way to AdSense, but the ads will be targeted to Facebook members profile data, and interests. This will be done, surprise, surprise, via cookies which will identify the members later when they visit other sites hosting Social Ads.
Facebook has already had a go at targeting ads on its own site, by means of its Facebook Flyers program, using demographic and psychographic data gleaned from members’ profiles. With Social Ads, that targeting will be extended right across the web.
The only glitch in all of this is that the targeting will only work for Facebook members, who are still not a major proportion of all web users, despite the fact that Facebook has grown so dramatically in membership.
There is also some talk that Facebook will be targeting ads according to who networks with who on the site, but this remains to be seen. Meanwhile industry pundits are waiting for November 6th to see what lies in store on the Facebook scene.