Facebook: Have Data, Will Travel? Rumored Ad Product for Third-Party Sites
According to Lee Lorenzen, of Altura Ventures, and AllFacebook, the "Social Ads" advertising service Facebook is supposedly set to launch next week will take Facebook ads outside the social network.
The rumored technology would work like this: Facebook would place a cookie on your computer (the site already requires users to have cookies enabled to log in), every time you visit a third-party site that runs ads utilizing the "Social Ads" product, they would be targeted based on your social networking profile data. So, theoretically, if you've professed your love of Pepsi on your Facebook profile, you might see Pepsi ads while reading the news at MSN.
Ad networks like DoubleClick and aQuantive already use cookies to track user behavior, that could theoretically be used to build a profile of which sites you visit. That ability does not necessarily sit well with privacy advocates who are concerned that these companies have too much information about users. What Facebook is reportedly planning to unveil would go beyond tracking your web browsing behavior and building a profile on what you like based on the sites you visit, however. Instead Facebook would use explicit data about your interests to target ads across the web.
Would users be comfortable with the idea of their profile data following them around outside of Facebook in the form of potentially very personally targeted advertising? Though, in reality, it is probably not that different from using your data to deliver ads on Facebook (the data is available to advertisers either way), it may just feel creepy to users to have the information about their lives that they had thought they were sharing privately with friends being used to target advertising directly to them across the web.
If this does fly, it could be a big win for Microsoft, whose $240 million investment in Facebook is thought by many to be more about acquiring a stronger advertising relationship with the site than acquiring a stake in the company. A combination of Facebook's immense, untapped user data set and Microsoft's ad sales team could mean significantly higher CPMs for sites using Microsoft's ad networks and higher revenue for Facebook and Microsoft.
What do you think? Is this a good idea for Facebook or will it just draw the ire of users? Would you continue you use a site that you knew was using your personal information to target ads to you on other web sites? Is Facebook's rumored proposal crossing the line in terms of privacy?
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Balls. I'm planning something along these lines :(
I'm not at all surprised to hear this (I wrote a post last week forecasting this as one of the top reasons MSFT put money into Farcebook). But back to your point ...
Who knows if it will create a big uproar with users. I doubt it actually, since I think Zuck knows how to handle his users better. He'll probably provide an opt-out, plus spin it as a "service". But it depends on the amount of data they provide -- if they're opening up our ENTIRE profiles to advertisers, it will cause a major uproar.
We are all being profiled continually by media companies as we browse the web. But that's fairly anonymous -- I'm an IP address, big deal. If what they're doing however enables an attachment of a name, age, friends, university, etc. to those anonymous browsing profiles, then it's going to be a lot of drama.
I can already hear the slow rumble in the distance of those who believe it's THEIR attention data. "No company has the right to use my attention data for profit!"
Thanks for the interesting info.
Agree with the above comment...it's not really surprising but it is a little worrying...but then again the arrival of Spock.com is along the same trend...Big Brother Web has a pretty good eye on us all. I think its simply a case of being WebAware. The day Facebook users realise their data is up for grabs they'll go elsewhere...and will keep doing so if they're looking for 'social' privacy...If you want to be totally private get off the web !!
Facebook still has a long way to go in terms on Ads, they haven't even scratched the surface this could really take off.
I don't think it will become a big deal as long as our personal information doesn't leak out. I see this as a petty situation since other sites do this. But there has to be a stop at one point because this being no big deal could be nothing compared to something else they think of in the future. After a while we would just be giving up all of our rights to them.
A couple of interesting points about this for sure. One that intrigues me in particular is re-using the cookie mechanism not for generic consumer ads, but for job advertisements. I think HR companies are generally a bit slow to adapt to this stuff, however, since the exclusivity of networks are how they derive so much value. I'll be blogging about that on my own ;).