The infographic they post in the article with the layered area chart is slightly misleading...it makes it look like Google's share is the smallest if you take a quick glance and don't stop to think about it. It took me a minute to realize that Yahoo's share wasn't actually larger than Google's, according to that graph. They should have used a stacked chart instead, which would have underscored the tiny share Facebook has, relative to the big guys.
My experience has shown that the CPC rate for Facebook advertising is generally more than double the rate that I pay for search CPC.<p>I'm guessing part of the allure of Facebook advertising is being able to get 250k impressions in 30 minutes and only pay $20 for the privilege. A lot of advertisers look at this and probably think 'Wow, a quarter of a million people have seen my brand'.<p>However, when you look at it from a CPC perspective you'd be more effective spending your money on search ads.
The WSJ headline underscores the opportunity and the article perfectly explains it - Facebook is completely non-agressive in how they're monetizing their ad inventory.<p>The fact that they are printing money with tiled CPC ads is crazy, the day that they switch to agressive pursuit of that inventory, start leveraging user data, etc . . . wow, I can't even compute.<p>Do not believe people who tell you that social media inventory isn't worth as much as other types of display - I know more than a handful of people that are seeing 3 - 4x returns on Facebook's platform which suggests that FB is UNDER charging for inventory, and that's with an essentially weak platform.<p>It reminds me of the good old days of Overture, early Google AdWords, etc.<p>Facebook is spot-on to be doing what they're doing: keep build market share over all else - I actually believe Zuck is trying to keep their ad-platform "non evil", but oncethey go public it's going to be a different game.
Relevant article from December '08: Social Media Ad revenue Will Never Match Search
<a href="http://voltagecreative.com/articles/social-media-ad-revenue-will-never-match-search/" rel="nofollow">http://voltagecreative.com/articles/social-media-ad-revenue-...</a>