Leosghost - 8:42 pm on Jun 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

Unless you work for Zynga or Facebook..why is this any reason to "party" or get excited..
This..

It may not be here "at this time," but Facebook's ability to track its logged-in users around the Web is well known. If, as industry watchers have long expected, Facebook launches an ad network for other sites, it would quickly upset the balance of power on the ad-supported Web.

quote did not come from facebook ..it is pure speculation / wishful thinking on the part of others..

You will also note that in oder to see any ads from facebook on zynga, one must be simultaneously "logged in" to ones facebook account..Mark is not letting the "marks" climb outside of the walled garden here..he is merely extending the wall around another partner mega site where those who are already receiving ads on facebook spend a very substantial slice of the rest of their online time ..

To me it reads very much like he is not happy with the result of showing ads on facebook only ( nor are major advertisers such as GM ) and has realised that many of his "eyeballs" drift to particular games maker with whom he has had a long time association..but..showing ads to people who are playing games is no more relevant to them than showing ads to them when they are looking at pictures or their friends or family or catching up on what their school friends are doing..

This looks like a ploy to attempt to justify a prt of the IPO price in the face of hard questions for which he and his bankers and VCs don't have any realistic answers..

The only people who are going to get "targeted" ads are those who have already given all their data to facebook and are logged in..so expect the ROI to be about the same as already was the case for advertising on facebook ( to most advertisers that ROI was crap compared with ads on Google )..and adsense publishers who somehow think that facebook is going to start an alternative platform to adsense for small and medium "publishers" need to put down the bong..

The delivery mechanism for these facebook ads is not contextual..it is totally personalised and the visitor needs to be logged in at the same time to facebook..

How does anyone think that could result in ads served which are relevant to any sites subject matter ?

Those served on facebook and zynga are not page relevant but personalised to the visitor..they are "stalker ads"..

Since Google went so heavily to "stalker ads", the complaining voices about a falling publisher revenues here have risen to a roar..

Maybe in the distant future facebook will invite small and medium webmasters to add a piece of code to their webpages, ( personally I can't see it happening within the next 12 months minimum, if ever ) and facebook would feed ads to those facebook visitors who were "logged in to facebook" at the same time..

In which case the revenues of those websites would be expected to be in line with what they make from showing Google's personalised ads now ..

And does anyone really believe that Google and Facebook would not say ( to small and medium publishers ) "it is either their ads or our ads ..you can't show both on the same page*" or possibly even not on the same site..and not to the same visitor..* as do the current terms of Google, Bing and Yahoo..

Those who tell webmasters and or advertisers that they can help you to make money with Google and or facebook, will hail this as "a new dawn"..and then try to tell you how they can help you to do this, or profit from this "new move" ..for a fee..

Apart from for those already pitching that kind of business, this places no new seats at the table..and makes no more room than before for anyone else, other than the mega sites, and those already intimately intertwined with facebook..Zynga being the perfect example of the latter..