Facebook is displaying ads for products that appear to be endorsed by actual users. When I clicked on the person’s name, I was directed to the ad, not the person’s profile. I don’t like being tricked like this, not one bit. But I did click.
It appears that despite denying the very existence of such a thing, Valleywag has received a copy of the elusive Facebook advertising rate card (via Valleywag). Dated from February, the document includes pricing for advertising on the home page, groups and various CTR and CPM data.
A story titled “The Year Without Toilet Paper” in the NY Times caught my eye this morning. When the page loaded, I saw something quite remarkable, or so I thought I did.
The banner and skyscraper ads surrounding the article seemed to be matched to the greenish glow cast by lighting in the article’s primary photo. How cool! I sat there for a few minutes wondering how the ads could know what the colors are on the web page they’re situated in, musing about Riya or some other image processing system that could be used to discern the primary colors of a web page. Or perhaps the system was reading meta-data about the images?
Alas, when I reloaded the page, a new ad came up, surely not meant to compliment the cool greenish hue of the article’s photo. Oh well, I’m sure this level of targeted advertising is in the cards, for now the ad industry has it’s hand full with cost-per-action advertising.
Scott Carp at Publishing 2.0 talks about issues surrounding the current economics of online advertising. Several good offshoot conversations as well.
Over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, a story about a woman who sold advertising space on the cover of her laptop. In exchange for $150 toward the purchase of a new machine, she offered local companies one square inch of advertising space on the back of her MacBook. Pretty cool idea, although I prefer stickers.
