Facebook to Offer Laser Targeted Ad Placement

Facebook.com, a social networking site with 31 million active users, recently announced efforts to develop a more sophisticated ad serving system allowing marketers to precisely target ads based on the personal data users have provided about themselves. Facebook currently offers "flyers" and banners that can be targeted by location and school, but soon it hopes to offer relevancy based ads by predicting user interests based on information listed in profiles. This may be similar to Google AdWords Content Network that reads web pages using semantic matching. The ads will appear in a prime location; subtlety mixed throughout the friend news feed page that appears first upon the user login. ** The highlighted area is an ad for FreeCreditReport.com and the numbers represent the average credit score for Americans. ** How did they know I was concerned about my credit? With aspirations to remain independent from interested parties such as Yahoo!, the stakeholders in Facebook plan to eventually go public. Facebook is implementing programs to help further monetize the site in order to make it more attractive for the IPO. With Facebook's wild growth as result of its open door policy, the site continues to increase in reach.