DISQUS

Oh man. I actually laughed out loud when I saw that mockup of Facebook with ads.

Very thoughful, in depth look at the future of ads for Facebook. The international traffic issue you touched on is a big one for marketers, especially when you look at the style of user engagement. I would argue that users who have used Facebook since the beginning, when they were in college and it was far more private, use Facebook in a significantly different way than users in international markets who now have the opportunity to adopt Facebook in its current form for the first time. Brands need to take this into account as they continue to engage Facebook users in more ways than just straight-up advertising.

Here's a pretty good YouTube video I came across recently, explaining Twitter (and its uses/benefits) in plain english:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

That link got cut, but you can click through on my name and find it. In any case, great reporting Nick.

The issue of Facebook's inventory is an interesting one, and not a subject I've seen discussed anywhere else. One possible explanation on the Facebook side is that the very News Feed that makes friends' activities and updates so easy to follow could very well be causing a decrease in pages visited -- there's no need to browse your friends' profiles when you can see everything they've done recently at a single glance.

On the other hand, though, if you're not reaching your daily budget, you could be going overboard on the targeting that the Social Ads platform makes available. If you scale back on your demographic filters and reach a larger audience, you will certainly garner more clicks (and possibly pay less per click at the same time). As long as your ads qualify those clicks (unqualified clicks are just like throwing money away), you'll see an improvement in your campaign's performance.

I've published some other suggestions I've gathered from a regular use of Social Ads here:

http://www.scheuguy.com/blog/2008/10/20/maximiz...

Very interesting indeed. Music (through the promotion and distribution of unsigned material in particular) has clearly been such a huge component of MySpace's success from the beginning, you have to wonder why Facebook hasn't gotten into the game sooner.

The observation you make about restructuring vs "restructuring" (in the HR jargon sense, i.e. layoffs) is a critical one and worth following over the coming months. It will be interesting to see how social networks' cutbacks in spending, if they do choose to do so, will affect their growth rate, especially for the biggies (Facebook and MySpace) that are branching out into new, rapid-growth markets (internationally in particular).

I'd have to disagree with you that MyAds are a direct marketer's dream - unless you happen to be marketing a band. The "Hypertargeting" is all hype and very little targeting - it simply doesn't compare to the granularity of Facebook's Social Ads, for instance.

At the moment, MyAds is not a platform for serious marketers unless you're driving traffic to a branded property within MySpace, and even then it's less than ideal.

In early September we published a white paper on the implications of "new facebook" for applications, and outline the tactical adjustments necessary for ongoing success in the new environment. Worth a read for anyone working in this space, from developers to brands.

http://www.brandnetworksinc.com/whitepapers/whi...