Sunday 19 December, 2010

Socializing with your Ads



Google is an advertising platform, not a merely a search engine..

Come tomorrow, what we are going to say is...

“ Facebook is an advertising platform and not a Social Network.. ”

Let’s look at some statistics – Google is already raking revenues of $ 23 Billion a Year

Facebook which publishes 50 billion ads per month is slated to earn about 2 billion approx next year.

More than 2 mil. Websites have integrated with Facebook , including over 80 of ComScore's U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of ComScore's Global Top 100 websites.

I’m not concerned with numbers, what I’m more concerned about is the possibilities..

The possibilities of growth for Facebook to serve ads beyond it’s own platform.

Now suppose these websites (which are commercial) start showing ads via Facebook. So while reading an article about Manchester United on the New York Times, there will be an ad on the side saying that 4 of your friends Like this or could even show its ( Man Untd. Page’s) latest update. You maybe reading an e-book and it’ll show an Ad of the other books that your friends Like.

These ads could also show up on Wordpress blogs (Google might not really want it on Blogger) Personally I would feel these to be much less intruding than the current Flash ads and I myself might publish Facebook Ads on my Personal blog [ as if any one reads it ;) ] which otherwise I would have despised.

So even here we could have the same ads along beside an article on Nokia or a Samsung , with the ad showing their respective Likes or recent updates.

What does this do to Facebook?! Well it simply brings in more dough and for us bloggers/publishers its makes the ads more social, neat, sophisticated or any good adjective one might want to glorify this with.

So think again .. is Facebook a social Networking Site or a Social Advertising Platform, depends on which side of the coin you are looking at.