Facebook, the social media network, will become the advertising network tonight when it launches Facebook Ads. Facebook made the official announcement today at Ad:Tech New York. The new ad network fires a shot across the bows of Google, which is trying to take Facebook head on with its own social-networking platform call OpenSocial.
Facebook Ads is comprised of three parts:
- Social Ads: Ads targeted at Facebook members using their profile data.
- Beacon: Ad widgets that advertisers can put on their own sites that allow Facebook members to become product endorsers, and spread that endorsement to all of their friends on Facebook through their personal feeds.
- Insight: Aggregated profile information that is exposed to Facebook advertisers that tells them what kind of people are getting their ads and who is clicking on them.
With over 50 million users and a very targeted demographic profiling of those users, Facebook is going to be very attractive to brand advertisers. However, I have a feeling Internet marketers will be finding ways to make money off the new platform as well.
