Facebook announces Facebook Ads

As pretty much everybody expected (or everyone who cared anyway), Facebook founder Mark Zukerberg announced the launch of Facebook Ads today. More than 60 brands have already partnered with Facebook Ads, including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Sony Pictures, and Verizon Wireless.

There are three components of Facebook Ads (the website is not live yet):

1. Businesses can build pages on Facebook
2. An Social Ads system that lets advertisers spread their brand message
3. An interface for gathering data about users' Facebook activity for marketing purposes

More than 100,000 new Facebook pages have been added today, covering brands, businesses, organizations, and bands. A brand page is a lot like a typical user page, allowing advertisers to add information and Facebook apps for doing things like reserving movie or plane tickets or making purchases. Fandango, iLike, Zagat and a bunch of other companies are launching applications for pages.

So how does this all work? Well, users can identify with particular brands they like helping to build a brand network. Every time a user becomes a fan of a business or brand, for example, their news feed will be updated sending out info about that brand to all of the users' friends. Because we know that you just can't wait to let all of your friends know that you drink Coke and not Pepsi.

Facebook's new Social Ads also combine social information with advertising. For example, rather than just seeing an Ad for a new movie, you may see an ad show up on your screen along with a review that a friend has written on his or her page. The system attaches this information without delivering personally identifiable information to advertisers. Social Ads will show up in user news feeds or in the ad space on the left side of the Facebook page.

Facebook is also launching a service called Beacon that lets users send information to their Facebook page from other sites. For example, Blockbuster is launching a service that lets you add information about your Blockbuster queue to your Facebook news feeds. And eBay will let sellers include eBay listings in their Facebook news feeds.

Via (umd Facebook.)