Looks like the first real threat to Adsense is about to become a reality...

Love seeing Google in trouble.

I doubt if they'll pose a serious threat to Google. They'll get in the game and do numbers, but Google will still be able to sleep at night.

No no, Myspace is too big to be threatened.

It's a challenge to Google IF Facebook goes about it competently. But from the looks of the Facebook Ads system on their base site, it doesn't seem like they're going to match Adsense in terms of responsiveness or monetized results for webmasters.

Hmm, this seems like it may have some potential if Facebook handle this right to launch a potential challenge to Google's dominance but frankly I don't think it will succeed. So far Facebook keep on posting loss after loss every quater whilst Google's profits keep getting better.

I'm not saying Facebook can't launch a decent challenge to Google here but based on past performance I somehow doubt it, just look at their share price and how much it's crashed since their now infamous launch.

Joel

The reason I don't think FB will overtake Google on this is because FB is obvious with their intentions. They're under pressure from their investors since their IPO to come up with ways to generate more revenue. If anyone does give Google some real competition, I say it'll be an unknown company that no one saw coming.

I think it would be great to have another source of revenue. Competition is good for the general public

Google will be able to sleep good at night for years and decades to come. No one will ever pass them on anything.

There may be lawsuits here and there for Google, but they will continue to be #1 for a very long time.

Anytime you take money away from Google, it's a threat. FB won't overtake Google in that area, but anytime you take money away from a giant like that, they feel it

Even if this new model doesn't overtake Google, or it's even a big competitor, just the fact that advertisers have another viable option is great news.

Maybe Google can't be beat but at least they could be ignored.

Advertisers will try Facebook and if it helps they will use both. They won't dump Google if they are making money with Google. It's not an either/or situation. Also "Likes" don't equate with genuine interest, and certainly not genuine "buying" interest. Plenty of FB people "like" something for a variety of reasons: tricked into it, supporting a friend's post, free something-or-other....how the hell does that equal targeted marketing and how will advertiser's benefit from it? It doesn't and they won't.

I don't know if it's a threat to Google, I'm not worried about that. I just like to see competition. Competition is great for the consumer (in this case, publishers).

Slightly off topic, but, I've spent money on Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

Used Adwords for a number of different businesses for years. For the most part, it's basically keyword driven with minimal demographic targeting.

So then I tried FB. At first I was impressed...I could target down to a specific interest and age group. Which makes sense...FB has a lot more personalized knowledge of you. So I ran some different ads, using the same text as my Google ads with better targeting.

For whatever reason, my FB ads never convert. Sure people click 'em and I get a "like" added to my page, but no conversion. The same ad text on google gives me great conversion rates.

I've tried it with two different businesses and both of them the same result: FB conversion...nil, Google good.

I'm of the opinion that perhaps there is a lot more of "Pay to click" going on with FB users right now which will explain my poor conversion. Regardless of the reason, I've just stopped advertising on FB. It's far too an expensive a way to get Likes to your page, which is all they've been delivering. Of course, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'll stick to Google for the time being.

Sounds a little simaler to this

All these years. I thought the same. I thought that adsense one day will come to an end because people will just have millions of blogs with adsense on it. It's time to do something else.

I am rooting for Facebook, anyway.

Google's near-monopoly is not good. I wish they had some competitor in the search engine field, but that's only wishful-thinking at this point. But I like the way Bing is improving and, who knows, a few years down the road Bing may be more powerful.

The more monetization methods webmasters have at their disposal, the better.

Interesting.

Will FB overtake google? Not likely. But as many previously mentioned, any stirring of the pot and competition is good for US.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future with facebook and google.

Thanks for sharing the article.

Well, don't bet against FB becoming another junk site, just as MySpace eventually did. When you give complete creative control to 10s of millions of individuals to run their page as they see fit, eventually it will become a giant spam network.

To Be honest..... I am not sure how to take it....

It may end being good for google, a bit of competition always makes things evolve and stay ahead.... This is what makes companies grow....

Think about it... if you didnt have any competition then you wouldnt work as hard to keep your customers happy :-)

I am going to sit back and watch and then I will make my comments later :-)

Danny

Personally i think there is no chance it will cause a real dent , against adwords. The true reason is because the company is so big is that it will take a long time to really get hurt. It wont just collapse over night.

We need an Adsense alternative that actually works. After trying many other networks there still isn't anybody providing a good converting Ad network, IMO.

If FB can display ads that convert, it won't take them long in capturing market share.

I am not fan of Google or Facebook, but Google has abused its power in advertising and I really hope facebook external network comes up strong enough.

I would say Google have to be considered. Facebook got a really hill of population and unlike Google, Facebook has more information.

Facebook knows who you are, your personal information, what you like, what you dislike, if you single, if you have children, you family, where you are what you do ....


It might seems to other Google knows more but it really doesn't.

Google enjoyed over the last year attacking social networks and trying force people into their Google plus. I can't wait to see how Google like it the other way around.

There are millions of people banned of adsense, some for good reason, but really many for not. It is just a free traffic that will jump to boost Facebook network as well as people who want to see if it is more rewarding.

I guess we got to wait and see. Best of luck for facebook

Well, I will say this much...the potential sucess of this entire FB external ads platform will ultimately hinge on one thing...their ability to successfully mine data from their user-base, which they will have to do successfully, especially since they don't index the web and show ads based on content relevancy.

This will be very interesting.

I would assume that they would couple data from their own user database as well as browser information.

Either way, regardless of whether or not they have an index of the web, they have money to pursue this project as a whole and the subsequent modifications that will be required to make it competitive.

I am sure that Google is making careful note of the fact that they have $$$ to invest in this project...

Has anyone else ever noticed that when searching from Google the amount of Ads to the right are non-existent for a lot of search terms.

Seems to me Google has put it's foot down far too hard and now will pay for it. It will start to feel the ripples of it actions and maybe start valuing marketers a little more, at least for paid search.

Spot on. FB is following suit.

Cock gun. Aim at foot. Pull trigger.

Thanks, Mike.

Facebook is a bit late into this race though, and I doubt they will take the majority of the market share from Google anytime in the near future.

@RyanMartin - It doesn't matter if another company offering contextual advertising to publishers manages to take the majority market share. The only people that care about that are the shareholders and people on the board. What matters is that publishers/webmasters have more options to monetize their websites with contextual ads. My 2 cents.

Perhaps this was the reason Mr Facebook has been so calm all year amongst all the speculation and financial craze

Do a little test... Go to Google and type in something you are interested in other than the usual make money stuff. Do you see any paid ads? For the majority of my searches I DO NOT see paid ads so this tells me that there are less and less advertisers on Google as their used to be.

But now go over to Bing and conduct the exact same search. BAM... tons of ads.

See results below:

Google Search Query: flat abs


Bing Search Query: flat abs

Just because Facebook is a big name doesn't mean that they'll threaten Google. It's much easier for an established player like Google to fight off competition when they already dominate the market all the have to do is cut prices, which is then bad for IM's like us because ate revenues decrease. More competition = lower advertising revenues for us!!!!