A recent story I dugg, gave me a moment to consider again advertising models for Facebook. So I decided to make a blog post based on the recent announcement and some ideas about Facebook and advertising overall.
The TechCrunch story, “Facebook Nabs The Man Who Engineered Google AdSense For Many Years” cites Facebook’s official statement that Greg will be a director of engineering.
Greg J. Badros’s Home Page
After three years at InfoSpace, in March 2003, I left Seattle and moved to Mountain View, California to work in the systems lab at Google Inc. where I am currently employed. From 2004 to 2007, I led Google’s AdSense engineering team. From February 2007 to March 2009, I led several of the consumer Apps engineering teams including Gmail, Calendar, and Reader. From March 2009 to the present, I lead the Application Platform group.
There are many opportunties for revenue from facebook. But these all depend on the continued growth Facebook.
Facebook was extremly intriguing for me when I first learned of how to connect with old friends. I quickly realized that the streams of professional contacts, personal family contacts, and new social media friends were not all suited to the same information access privelages. This was not completely solved with the ability to create friend lists. Friend lists still don’t support a privacy methadology that would allow someone to truly control group relationship dynamics.
This is the one reason that Facebook has left the door open for a future competitor to address these aspects directly (probably Google) or the right power user social solution may come via the extension of Twitter to aggregate content like Facebook and provide users complete and not limited control.
Thus, the ultimate revenue model for Facebook would be supported by insuring more control to the leader users. It’s the advanced users that want these features, even if they come in the form of premium features. Hint, hint; there’s money in giving power users the control they need to make Facebook the hub of their online profile, social, and communications management.
Next, “get the ads right.” If you show the right ads to the right people, everyone wins. Create a commercial real estate district on Facebook for people seeking pages, groups, or information related to user interests.
Allow both page owners to pay premium fees to remove ads and charge advertisers for contracting a page position. Continue to get add feedback and ratings. Asking users for thumbs up and down is a great way to keep relevant ads in front of your users. An ad headline of “$72/hr summer job pay” is probably misleading -I thumbed down and classified it as such. Keeping excellent creative and real value ads will be critical or users will tune out the ads very quickly.
Wired Magazine Fan Page
Consumers like ads. The complaints about ads and marketers are always driven by poor ad experiences. Most magazines understand the need for the right ads to balance editorial, enhance the presentation, and please readers. I read many magazines for the ads alone. I use many products and services advertised to me via the right magazine.
When I’m on facebook, looking at the WIRED magazine page, show me ads for gadgets, tech, online tools, and apps – not the ad you have right now with the headline “Owe Over 10K in Debt.”
Facebook is positioned for success. They continue to acquire talent. I’d bet they have a few aces ready for announcement this year and we will continue to see impressive growth results.
