skibum - 4:52 am on Jul 7, 2009 (gmt 0)

Facebook will either be HUGE or fade away into nothing. From my experience there are still lots of big corps out there that are willing to throw megabucks at search and banners and the only thing they look at is clicks and impressions. Tell them they can target women 30-35 years old, with incomes 50-100K who are single, list their profession as x,y or z and then even more specific criteria and they will probably pony up once they realize they can target that specifically.

I think Facebook traffic is essentially forum traffic which is generally worthless to most advertisers unless they can spam the actual forums well. But when everyone and their grandmother willingly posts their entire life on Facebook and records all their conversations and interests on the site, it may be a gold mine for advertisers who want to hit those specific demos.

With all the stuff ad servers can track don't be surprised to see Facebook publish white papers that claim Facebook advertising drove crazy sales and ROI numbers. It will be based on people who "saw" or "were exposed" to ads and not based on people who actually responded (i.e clicked) on them.

I'll put my money on search any day.