Tim Kendall is Facebook's director of monetization. (We were sad to learn his job has nothing to do with the French impressionists.) He says Facebook can make its notoriously low-performing Social Ads work — basically by bring back Beacon. The key, Kendall told AllFacebook, is keeping track of Facebook users'…
For months now, we've watched as Facebook served users pornographic ads, as well as less expertly targeted come-ons. Now, with a new feature that lets users review the ads they've been served, the company's figured out a smart way to fix the problem. We're a little sad. Who won't miss the days when straight men get…
Two tipsters tell us Facebook's billing systems are broken, undercharging them for spending on Facebook's Social Ads. "Ad men, like yours truly, are reporting missed charges," one tells us. Another:
Greylock Partners VC David Sze is no doubt thrilled to have been caught endorsing Blackberry via Facebook. Such "social ads" are the very reason his firm invested in the social network. If you're more chary of inflating Facebook's valuation while giving a thumbs-up to its advertisers, here's how to keep Facebook's…
It's hard to count the ways Mark Zuckerberg botched the launch of Facebook's "Social Ads" last fall. From the portentous talk of a once-every-100-years "change" in media, to the privacy brouhaha over Facebook's Beacon technology, Facebook's inexperienced CEO did just about everything wrong. At last, he's starting to…
Musicians can promote their work through Facebook's Musician Pages. But before allowing them to upload music files, Facebook requires administrators to submit scans of their driver's licenses, to keep on file in case claims of copyright infringement come up. Last night, one of these administrators, an employee at…
Failed social networking entrepreneur Mark Pincus, the force that brought the Internet both Tribe.net and Acebucks, now hopes to dominate the Facebook application market with his new casual games company Zynga. He claims he hasn't touched his $10 million in VC funding because he's in the lucrative business of…
Facebook can't afford to spurn marketing firms like New York's Attention PR. But it does. Last Friday, Attention PR built a Facebook page for a client — a new kind of souped-up profile that can be advertised on Facebook. Though not as well known as Beacon, Facebook Pages are part of Mark Zuckerberg's …
The premise behind Facebook's Social Ads is the notion that users of the social network will declare their brand loyalty on the site, and thereby opt into targeted ads from some of their favorite corporations. Starbucks, despite a recent dip in store visits after a price hike, serves 44 million customers a week. So…
The night after Facebook launched its new ad products, all we heard from Madison Avenue was the baying of sheep. Everybody loved what they saw. Google had better watch out and MySpace was done for, said the ad buyers in wool suits. But now, the unbelievers are finally starting to come out of the woodwork.
You know what Facebook members are? 50 million suckers. See, through Facebook's new ad product, Facebook Beacon, each of us will soon begin endorsing products to our friends. That much I'm fine with. My friends are not too good for spam. But if my good name is going to get Facebook paid, I want a cut, too.
Let's come out and say it: Facebook wants to be MySpace. And MySpace wants to be Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's social network has the buzz, the tech, and the runaway growth rate, while MySpace has more users, more revenues, and the backing of News Corp. But the mutual envy became really clear to me when Facebook…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the new ad pages are "beautiful" and make him "very happy". We suspect it could look like dogshit and he'd still be "very happy" now that he's worth $5 billion — on paper, anyway. Unfortunately for Facebook's 50 million users, they won't be able to opt out of viewing the new…
EXILE IN SOHO — Despite my best efforts — a suit, Brylcreem, and a side part — I didn't convince a posse of ID-checking Outcast flacks to let me into Facebook's invite-only ad event at Loft Eleven in Hell's Kitchen. But insiders are still keeping us informed about the event, where Facebook is launching new targeted…
A source tells us Facebook will launch SocialAds next Tuesday, November 6 at a swanky little event hall called "Loft Eleven." The event goes "all afternoon," so until we hear otherwise, we're presuming it will be a five-hour forced march through the land of social-network ads, starting at noon. The loft features a…
"Web sites and search engines are able to provide valuable services to consumers for free due in large part to advertiser funding. Like commercials on television and ads in newspapers and magazines, online ads have become staples of the Internet medium. Without them, many web sites would either have to charge…
Googler Brad Fitzpatrick has dressed up as Facebook for Halloween. Ironic, since he might easily have been a Facebooker dressing up in Google's primary colors right now. Before jumping from Six Apart, he interviewed at both Facebook and Google.
All the attention might be on Facebook's advertising aspirations, the Microsoft investment, and Google's OpenSocial initiative. But don't think Facebook has forgotten about MySpace, which still has a lock on the music market, thanks to bands which discovered the site as a way to connect with fans. One report has…
