When I co-founded an online advertising business back in 2005, I didn’t think that there would be another online brand to encroach on the almighty Google’s dominance within the online advertising arena. Google was what Federer was – unbeatable for many years. Google adwords was by far the most effective online advertising solution back in the mid 2000’s for businesses…

However, as I wrote in my past blog “An Evening With The Ozzie Zuckerberg” it seems that we are very much in the Social Web Era, being led by the giants, Twitter and Facebook, with Google’s relevance questionably falling behind.

It’s plain to see that Facebook has duplicated Google’s sponsored link model, only with the addition of a huge social push.

If you look closely you will notice that what Facebook has done is divided a user’s profile into three distinct columns, with an ever widening right-hand side column. Have you noticed your eyes drifting a lot more to the right hand side? If you answered yes, it’s safe to say this is due to more social content being uploaded here, from “unread updates”, “photo memories”, and today with the re-introduction of “memorable status updates” which shows your “friends” popular status updates.

All of the mentioned activity is to draw the user to the column which is jam-packed with the sponsored ads. The Facebook layout is designed in a way that makes these ads seamlessly integrate into the general architecture of the site. Smart.

All of these changes with Facebook can be directly linked to the increasing desire to generate more income from advertisers. OK, so what does this mean for you?

1. User – Able to use Facebook free of charge, a social experience mixed with advertising. Hopefully these ads, if targeted properly will appeal to you.
2. Brands – You will be able to properly target your demographic in a more effective manner.

A space we will be following very closely here at UMM.

Written by Benoit Thorp.