

Value of Facebook Ads Approaches Zero - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/22/are-facebook-ads-going-to-zero-lookery-lowers-its-gaurantee-to-75-cent-cpms/

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crocus
Perhaps, but the cost of serving them probably approaches zero faster.

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mechanical_fish
Good point... except that the number of eyeballs on Earth is limited, so the
total amount of profit to be made in the market is presumably also approaching
zero.

Or so it would be if "approaching zero" was not just a glib metaphor.

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lupin_sansei
> the number of eyeballs on Earth is limited

That's obviously not true (in the medium term), more people are being born,
and more people are coming online every day.

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hectorhector
Why are ads on social sites so hard? They know my age, location, favorite
bands and movies! It just seems like it should be really easy.

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mattmaroon
Because people don't go to those sites looking for stuff. They go to hang out.
Google ads work so well because people go there searching for something.

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LostInTheWoods
Its time to go back to the business-model drawing board. Get rid of the ads
and start charging for the service? It would be interesting to see how many
social networks could justify their existence based on utility alone.

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shutter
If the charge was _minimal_, I'd be willing to pay a few bucks a year for
Facebook.

If you use it properly (read: non-obsessively), it's a great way to keep
connected with people you've known in the past several years. Without
Facebook, I would have lost touch with a lot of people, whom I could now
communicate with easily when I need to. I gave up the day-to-day "social"
aspect of it a while ago, but for keeping connections with past high-school
and college friends, there isn't a better way to keep the doors open.

That being said, if I was paying for the service, I'd hope they would open up
their data (for export) and give a few more bells and whistles for the money.

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soundsop
They could do a flickr-type model and charge only heavy users (say, more than
1000 friends) or charge for premium services (high-res photos or similar
features).

EDIT: Even if social ads don't work out, I think Facebook will probably find a
way to make lots of money. Although, maybe not enough money to justify the
highest valuations we've heard.

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aswanson
Why don't they do this?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=210434>

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bluelu
Most of the applications are so clustered with ads, so that everbody is
probably ignoring them.

I do however sometimes find the facebook ads (the main site) highligy targeted
(I even clicked twice on those). I bet they charge more than a few cents per
1000 impressions.

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lpgauth
The CPM might be getting smaller and smaller but it's far from 0 as the
numbers of pageviews on facebook applications are usually huge.

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aneesh
As ad_price --> 0, bubble --> pop

