This week’s New Yorker magazine has a lengthy piece by John Cassidy on Facebook, including an interview with Mark Zuckerberg. The most interesting part of the article touches on how the access controls that Facebook gives users yield more monetizable content:

Eighteen months ago, the going rate for a banner ad on social-networking sites was pennies per thousand page viewings. Today, the rate on MySpace is about ten cents, and Facebook, with its upscale demographic and unobjectionable content, can charge more–as much as four dollars per thousand page views.

In a world where revenue is as simple as page views * CPM, would you rather have 10x the page views or 10x the CPM of your competition? Make your bets accordingly.

More at attentiontrust.org

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8 Responses to “Facebook monetizes up to 40 times better than MySpace”

  1. Micro Persuasion Says:

    Correction Coming as Social Nets See Traffic and Ad Prices Boom…

    The Social Software Weblog reports that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, according to Nielsen. MySpace had the biggest growth at 367%. See the chart below for more. (MySpace is an Edelman…

  2. Math Says:

    $4/$0.10 = 4000% (40x)

  3. Information Narcosis Says:

    Information Abundance, Attention Scarcity…

    Thanks to RSS implementations that let users control where their attention goes, and content management systems that ease the production of digital goods, it is the attention of users that is increasingly scarce. That scarcity of attention contributes …

  4. Brand advertising is the crux of the social networking business at Inside Facebook Says:

    [...] Because CPMs are so low in the social networking business, Facebook is rushing to compete with MySpace for premium advertising dollars by creating promotions that create community in its demographic around the advertiser’s brand. For instance, 100,000 MySpace members recently became friends with the Wendy’s Square). [...]

  5. ventureblogalist Says:

    Hi, does facebook/myspace have CPC ads running? Do you know if they utilize other ad networks? What do you think they have for CTR? I think I read you cannot if you already use adsense due to google TOS.

  6. Inside Facebook » Blog Archive » Facebook signs exclusive ad sales deal with Microsoft - Tracking Facebook news, commentary, and analysis Says:

    [...] Currently, Facebook sells ads through an inside sales force, AOL-owned Advertising.com, and DoubleClick.  As of tonight, no ad sales positions are listed in Facebook’s job postings. Historically, social networking sites have had a hard time monetizing their traffic through traditional CPC and CPM ads, though Facebook is rumored to perform better than most social networking sites in general. It appears that Google’s initiative with MySpace lit a fire under Microsoft BD leading to what are likely very favorable terms for Facebook. No word yet on guaranteed payouts over the life of the deal. Posted by justin.smith Filed in General [...]

  7. Media-Blog » Archives » StudiVZ laut IVW im Juni 2007 meistgenutztes Webangebot Says:

    [...] “Inside Facebook quotes a New Yorker report that the going rate for a banner ad on social-networking sites was pennies per thousand (CPM). Today, MySpace’s CPMs have risen to about ten cents, while Facebook commands a whopping $4.” [...]

  8. Ad-Supported File Sharing? It Doesn’t Add Up - The Seminal :: Independent Media and Politics Says:

    [...] cost per thousand ad impressions (CPM) for most publishers that I’ve seen hovers between $1 and $3. MySpace advertising goes for $0.10, Facebook for $4. Higher end sites like the New York Times can charge as much as [...]

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