Advertisers and Agencies To Visit Facebook Turf

Facebook execs will be hosting a variety of ad agencies and their clients to a roundtable, presenting their latest ideas of targeting the immense Facebook audience of 40 million users.

One person described Facebook’s advertising moves as creating an alternative revenue stream to that of Google, although it should be noted Google offers a markedly different targeting service. With two-thirds of the search market in its grasp, Google has vast amounts of data about people’s intent — what they are actively searching for online. It also segments pages based on the context of those pages. Those two tools are a powerful combination.
Facebook, on the other hand, has an enormous database of people’s demographics, relationships, likes and dislikes — all offered up voluntarily based on what people choose to write on their profiles. Ideally, it knows more about its users than many other internet sites, although some aren’t convinced that the data allows Facebook to determine intent.

The heat is on in impressing advertisers with a new “monetization” platform – especially when “current funding negotiations value the company at up to $15 billion.”

Advertising Age

[Via AgencySpy]