Wednesday 11 August 2010

Facebook Advertisers Boost Spending 10-Fold, COO Says

• It has had strong usage for years, but now Facebook is finally catching up on the monetization front. This has of course prompted a slew of local marketing services built around providing small businesses with ways to advertise on Facebook:
• Yell Adds Facebook Ads to ‘netReach’
• ShopLocal Launches New Retail Marketing Software For Facebook
• In addition, many are predicting Facebook's imminent entry into location-based check-in services. It will be interesting to see whether small but well-known incumbents like Foursquare will be able to survive (or avoid being swallowed up).

Google Agonizes on Privacy as Ad World Vaults Ahead

• The WSJ has a long piece based on a leaked internal memo from a few years ago, detailing Google's decision - and decision-making process - to start marketing to people using more sophisticated targeting techniques. As Larry and Sergey argue over whether or not to use people's (Google) search, (Chrome) browsing, and (Gmail) emailing history to reach people with more targeted ads, one can't help but come to the conclusion that evil is what evil does.