Facebook launches its ad platform; Coca-Cola as friend?

Some friend. Facebook on Tuesday announced its long awaited advertising system, dubbed Facebook Ads. According to the company’s statement, Facebook Ads will allow “businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined how the company has 60 partners lined up. Facebook Ads will attempt to make advertising more viral with users learning about brands and products via friend referrals.

The partner roster for Facebook Ads, which was rolled out in New York, is impressive. It includes Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless. Microsoft, which recently bought a stake in Facebook, is no surprise.

Meanwhile Facebook Ads has three parts: Businesses can build pages to connect with their audience; viral social ads and an interface to track activity.

In addition, Facebook also announced today that 44 websites are using Facebook Beacon, a tool that allows users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook. Beacon is a part of the Facebook Ads system. With Beacon, Web sites offer Facebook users the most relevant parts of their sites for distribution on the social site. When a logged in Facebook user visits a participating site, he or she is asked whether they want to share activities with friends.

eBay, Fandango, Live Nation, CBS Interactive and many IAC sites are in the Beacon program. For example, eBay let eBay.com sellers include their eBay listings in their Facebook newsfeeds via Beacon.

Of course, the big question is whether Facebook users will find all of this marketing annoying. That remains to be seen, but we should know the answer soon–100,000 new Facebook Pages launched from brands, bands, businesses and other organizations.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6910