While Facebook’s in-house platform ad network is still in early stages of alpha testing, it may in fact be driving significant revenues from social game developers purchasing Facebook Ads to help boost the launch of their games. This slightly more indirect method of monetizing its platform may actually be a pretty substantial line of revenue for the company.

For example, in an interview with Silicon Alley Insider, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said the company regularly spends large sums when launching new titles.

“We do spend a lot of money on advertising when we want to, like when we launched Farmville,” Pincus said. “We spent a couple million dollars advertising it and we’re not shy about that…”

> Read more at Inside Social Games