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November 07, 2007, 02:10 PM ET
I, the Advertiser
As expected, Facebook unveiled its new advertising scheme yesterday. Now comes the interesting part: We’ll see if the site’s users are willing to participate in the plan, which asks them to help companies hawk their wares.
The new scheme puts a slightly different spin on MySpace’s recently announced “behavioral targeting” strategy, according to The Times of London:If, for instance, a Facebook user downloads a film from Sony’s Web site, he or she would be given the option of broadcasting the purchase to friends, who would have no choice but to receive the message, along with an ad from Sony.
Users can either implant such consumerist tidbits into their “news feeds” — bulletin boards that let people know what their friends are up to — or have their photographs appear in “social ads” sent to their friends. The idea is to make Facebook’s advertising seem conversational, according to Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive. “People influence people,” he said yesterday at an event. “Nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend.”
That might be music to the ears of the 60 or so companies that have already signed up for the new advertising program. For the first time, those businesses will be able to create their own Facebook profiles and try to woo users with microtargeted ads. (The companies will only have access to information that users make public, according to the social network.)
But will Facebook users view the new plan as a helpful development or as a sign of the site’s creeping corporatization? Leah Pearlman, product manager for Facebook Ads, writes on the site’s official blog that Facebook will remain “clutter-free and clean,” and that ads will become “more relevant and more interesting to you.” According to The Times, though, some Facebook members are already crying foul. —Brock Read
Categories: Student-Life, Company-Watch
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