6 ms·

I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense. Advertising on the Facebook site itself seems not to be working, but I could foresee a situat

by helipad 14y ago

I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense. Advertising on the Facebook site itself seems not to be working, but I could foresee a situation where website owners allow Facebook to display ads on their site for a fee per click just like AdSense. Facebook already has a javascript presence on many, many websites already.

shinchan 14y ago
Wow. Its like you just read my mind! I was about to say the same thing. Indeed, especially since there are a lots of apps out there implementing Facebook login, especially mobile apps, games and apps alike, could this be a solution to their mobile strategy? (this is not a rhetorical question.) Whats stopping them from implementing this?
AznHisoka 14y ago
Adsense makes up a minority of Google's ad profits. The billion dollar business is in Adwords, not Adsense.
- helipad 14y ago
  Indeed - I've no idea what the revenues would be - was just an idle thought. Right now the problem is getting people to believe in Facebook's revenue to get some confidence back in the market. Not saying it's is a silver bullet by any means.
- PelCasandra 14y ago
  Minority? It almost half of all Google ad profits.
  - mda 14y ago
    It is more like Adwords: 70% Adsense: 30% http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q1_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q1_google_earnings....
- earl 14y ago
  sadly, no. Adsense is a $10B/year business. Even ex tac of 30%, that's still a big business. From wikipedia [1]: In Q1 2011, Google earned US$2.43 billion ($9.71 billion annualized), or 28% of total revenue, through Google AdSense [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense
brandnewlow 14y ago
I used to think this as well, but there's a problem. What if FB ads are not as good a monetization solution for publishers as Google ads? This seems quite possible. Facebook advertising is much much cheaper than Google advertising on a per-click and per-impression basis. With Google ads, advertisers are used to paying as much as $20/click in some areas. I've never heard of a FB advertiser paying more than $2/click. Likewise, CPMs on FB are in the single digit pennies quite often. On the web, banner ads are around $0.75 CPMs for decent sites. Facebook might have looked at this and might believe that if they launched a network like this, the payouts just wouldn't be able to compete with what Google's able to give publishers.
mootothemax 14y ago
I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense. Maybe that is/was one of the aims behind the Like button? Facebook could use that connection to tailor the adverts displayed to the user (along with the site's content!), provided the user is logged into Facebook at the time. Admittedly, I think doing so would kick up a bit of a stink ;)
mkr-hn 14y ago
I've never had good results from ticking the box for Google's display network in AdWords campaigns. The culprit is poor implementation by webmasters, not the amount or detail of data available. I don't see why a Facebook display network would do any better.
alain94040 14y ago
They'll do it as soon as they are confident that they can pay websites more per click than AdSense. It's a winner-take-all market. But AdSense is very vulnerable: intent (the search string), which is the one reason Google advertising works, is absent from AdSense. As an example, I once wrote a blog post with a title like "startup financing: take the elevator, not the stairs". Google placed ads on that post for Thyssen elevators. It had just no clue that the topic was startups, not actual elevators. Not impressed.
- earl 14y ago
  Google uses search activity from the past several hours to help match ads in adsense for content[1]. Hiding those from other ad networks is, imo, one of the best reasons they should be sued for antitrust. We've recently started to expand the use of the query words in referral URLs to a few hours so we can so we can continue to deliver more relevant ads. The technical way that we're doing this is by associating the relevant query words in the referral URL with the existing advertising cookie on the user's browser. After a short period of time (a few hours) the query words are no longer used for the purposes of matching ads. [1] http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/better-contextual-matching.html http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/better-contextual-matchi...
  - maxerickson 14y ago
    That article doesn't discuss the details of the implementation, but it could very well be the Adsense js that is tagging the cookie with the referral data. Any ad network can implement that.
    - earl 14y ago
      Perhaps I wasn't clear. Google is hiding referer data, particularly the query string, for a growing number of searchers. Today it's anyone logged into google, or about 60% of traffic to my blog. Tomorrow, they may well do it for anyone. Right now for the logged in users, and potentially in the future for anyone, the only ad network that can still see the search terms in the referer string is adsense, because Google search can pass them to adsense internally. No other ad network can see them. This is obviously incredibly valuable for adsense. And it should trigger an antitrust violation because they're using their monopoly / near monopoly in search to juice their offsite context and display ad networks.

by helipad 14y ago

shinchan 14y ago

Wow. Its like you just read my mind! I was about to say the same thing. Indeed, especially since there are a lots of apps out there implementing Facebook login, especially mobile apps, games and apps alike, could this be a solution to their mobile strategy? (this is not a rhetorical question.) Whats stopping them from implementing this?

AznHisoka 14y ago

Adsense makes up a minority of Google's ad profits. The billion dollar business is in Adwords, not Adsense.

helipad 14y ago
Indeed - I've no idea what the revenues would be - was just an idle thought. Right now the problem is getting people to believe in Facebook's revenue to get some confidence back in the market. Not saying it's is a silver bullet by any means.
PelCasandra 14y ago
Minority? It almost half of all Google ad profits.
- mda 14y ago
  It is more like Adwords: 70% Adsense: 30% http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q1_google_earnings.html http://investor.google.com/earnings/2012/Q1_google_earnings....
earl 14y ago
sadly, no. Adsense is a $10B/year business. Even ex tac of 30%, that's still a big business. From wikipedia [1]: In Q1 2011, Google earned US$2.43 billion ($9.71 billion annualized), or 28% of total revenue, through Google AdSense [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense

brandnewlow 14y ago

I used to think this as well, but there's a problem. What if FB ads are not as good a monetization solution for publishers as Google ads? This seems quite possible. Facebook advertising is much much cheaper than Google advertising on a per-click and per-impression basis. With Google ads, advertisers are used to paying as much as $20/click in some areas. I've never heard of a FB advertiser paying more than $2/click. Likewise, CPMs on FB are in the single digit pennies quite often. On the web, banner ads are around $0.75 CPMs for decent sites. Facebook might have looked at this and might believe that if they launched a network like this, the payouts just wouldn't be able to compete with what Google's able to give publishers.

mootothemax 14y ago

I wonder what would happen if Facebook ran a scheme like AdSense. Maybe that is/was one of the aims behind the Like button? Facebook could use that connection to tailor the adverts displayed to the user (along with the site's content!), provided the user is logged into Facebook at the time. Admittedly, I think doing so would kick up a bit of a stink ;)

mkr-hn 14y ago

I've never had good results from ticking the box for Google's display network in AdWords campaigns. The culprit is poor implementation by webmasters, not the amount or detail of data available. I don't see why a Facebook display network would do any better.

alain94040 14y ago

They'll do it as soon as they are confident that they can pay websites more per click than AdSense. It's a winner-take-all market. But AdSense is very vulnerable: intent (the search string), which is the one reason Google advertising works, is absent from AdSense. As an example, I once wrote a blog post with a title like "startup financing: take the elevator, not the stairs". Google placed ads on that post for Thyssen elevators. It had just no clue that the topic was startups, not actual elevators. Not impressed.

earl 14y ago
Google uses search activity from the past several hours to help match ads in adsense for content[1]. Hiding those from other ad networks is, imo, one of the best reasons they should be sued for antitrust. We've recently started to expand the use of the query words in referral URLs to a few hours so we can so we can continue to deliver more relevant ads. The technical way that we're doing this is by associating the relevant query words in the referral URL with the existing advertising cookie on the user's browser. After a short period of time (a few hours) the query words are no longer used for the purposes of matching ads. [1] http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/better-contextual-matching.html http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/02/better-contextual-matchi...
- maxerickson 14y ago
  That article doesn't discuss the details of the implementation, but it could very well be the Adsense js that is tagging the cookie with the referral data. Any ad network can implement that.
  - earl 14y ago
    Perhaps I wasn't clear. Google is hiding referer data, particularly the query string, for a growing number of searchers. Today it's anyone logged into google, or about 60% of traffic to my blog. Tomorrow, they may well do it for anyone. Right now for the logged in users, and potentially in the future for anyone, the only ad network that can still see the search terms in the referer string is adsense, because Google search can pass them to adsense internally. No other ad network can see them. This is obviously incredibly valuable for adsense. And it should trigger an antitrust violation because they're using their monopoly / near monopoly in search to juice their offsite context and display ad networks.