Report: Facebook's First Half Revenue Hits $1.6 Billion

And this surprises you why? Facebook has become soooo ubiquitous, it's to the point of being a turn off, IMHO.

Anybody having great success with Facebook ads?

Anybody having great success with Facebook ads?

No, no matter how I narrowed the demographics.

One major thing that would improve the productivity of Facebook ads would be the ability to limit how many times any particular user sees your ad.

Their "frequency" reports are next to useless, because you have no way to tell, or control, whether your ad was seen once each by a hundred people, or 100 times by a single user who was having a busy session.

AdWords lets you set frequency caps for the display network, and I have found that that boosts the cost-effectiveness of most campaigns. That would be at the top of my wish list for Facebook advertising.

never got good ROI using facebook. Will give it another go, but it was money down the drain for me. Users don't click while playing pet society.

Facebook has become soooo ubiquitous, it's to the point of being a turn off

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

TRUE!

Anybody having great success with Facebook ads?

Yes. Mark Zuckerburg.

LOL@wheel
Instant classic

Although I've never had any success with ecommerce sites, Facebook ads work if you're pushing community/social sites.

I don't think the nature of Facebook is conducive to generating ad revenues. I'm sure some advertisers have good a ROI, but Facebook users seem to pay more attention to the social atmosphere and the applications, and focus less on ads.

Facebook declined to comment on its financial results.

Leak info via a controlled source , let the market keep rumouring .... monitor / test the waters .... go IPO, and exit with the cash.

It certainly wasn't the cleaner who accidently fell across the information on Mark or his teams desk. :)

~ Without a racy or dramatic image in the ad the click ratio is low.
~ With a racy or dramatic image the ctr is acceptable but quality is extremely low.
~ Ignoring the above, return on investment is well below other advertising options, for me anyway.

That doesn't bode well for the viability of facebook long term, short term I no longer use Facebook and most of my family members have also closed/abandoned accounts. As it becomes more commercial the appeal is lost.

I wonder how well Facebook will do when seemingly ever major brand stops pushing a "join us on facebook" button in favor of their own chat location, or none at all. I see facebook mentions on commercials not about facebook all the time, free advertising on prime time TV... that will not last forever. Then what ?

It has to work. Imagine the planet without Facebook - social panic and withdrawal symptoms.

Everyone will be paying recurring subscriptions sometime in the not too distant future with value addons, via partnerships with whoever. The smart folks at FB have to have something up their sleeve which they'll need to divulge at some point.

The value's in the social connection , not the advertisng - but that could come later, maybe/maybe not.

Here's waiting .....

They need a revalation. With that revalation, they can pwn Google.

I think they just need to integrate business into their site somehow, some way facebooker's can 'search'. Maybe a directory, maybe a searchable list of facebook-approved businesses. something. They just need two things:
- facebook visitors stay on facebook
- the traffic isn't general ad traffic like it is now, instead a seperate section facebookers go to when they are explicitly searching for something business related. Get rid of the traffic from people not intereseted in your ads, and get the people just looking at research. This is the difference with traffic from Google - they're seeking something when they search, it's very targetted.

I suspect facebook is heading in this direction somehow. It's still got potential to be a gamechanger, just not in it's current format.

Facebook has become soooo ubiquitous

It is not but has it is really a big surprising fortune.

The value's in the social connection

And it is again a surprise none of other company had it.

'facebook-approved businesses'

I like that.

Sort of like when you sign up for a newsletter and they ask you to tick the box so as to receive messages from 'carefully selected advertisers'

Translation for both - they've paid us :)

FB will not make Google money until they cross the "creepy line" like Google did. Not that $1 Billion /year profit is a joke but still...