Facebook went public today and with that they got a huge influx of money, but also a huge influx of responsibility. Now, they need to make a lot more money to continue to keep investors interested and making money as well. Although I am sure Facebook has many plans on different ways they can increase their revenue (ads on their mobile traffic?), one way that is being rumored is that Facebook is developing their own offsite ad network. Something similar to the current ads on Facebook, but for 3rd party publishers like yourself. Basically, Facebook’s own AdSense. If the rumors are true and they do release their own offsite ad network it could very well be the next big traffic source and you could make a lot of money from it.
Traffic Source Waves
It seems that traffic sources work in waves. The first people on the wave make the most money and as times passes and more people use it, the wave begins to lower into the water. Two great examples of this are Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
Believe it or not, there was a time when affiliate’s were welcomed and encouraged to run traffic on AdWords. An affiliate could setup a campaign on AdWords to an acai berry offer from their favorite affiliate network, spend $100 on AdWords and make $2,000 in sales. Google was much more lenient on their advertiser policies and traffic was dirt cheap. Many people made a lot of money. With time, Google figured out that affiliates may have been hurting their user experience and advertisers started competing more and driving up click costs. Eventually, you got to the AdWords we know and hate today.
Facebook Ads had a very similar wave. When it was first released you could basically get any ad for any offer approved. Not only that, but with little competition the price for traffic was super cheap. A lot of people made ton of money. So, will you be able to do the same thing with Facebook’s offsite ads? Probably.
Facebook Offsite Ads
If Facebook offsite ads are released then there will probably be a few differences between it and the traffic source waves I mentioned above. We may not see the same great results right off the bat because…
- Facebook has learned a lot from it’s experience with Facebook Ads
- Facebook already has a lot of compliance measures in place.
- Everyone will have their eye on it anyway.
When Facebook ads was first released (Facebook Flyers) they had no idea what they were doing. Unfortunately, they have a pretty good idea now. So, if they release offsite ads they will probably have a lot of compliance measure in place and they may be just as strict with affiliates. Also, with the huge amount of advertisers they already have the market could get saturated pretty quickly with and that’ll essentially drive up prices. There is also a lot of attention being placed on it already because of the privacy issues. If I can display ads on my blog based on your interests on Facebook, is that an invasion of your privacy? Facebook’s privacy policy has a sketchy history so the media will have their eyes on this new feature if it’s launched.
Tons of Great Traffic
I can see a ton of potential as both an advertiser and a publisher with offsite Facebook ads whether they’re friendly with affiliates or not. As a publisher, I imagine the ads will be very intriguing for website visitors. There’s no such thing as banner blindness when you’ve never seen the banner. Click through rates should be awesome. As an advertiser, there should be huge potential as well. Currently, I have active campaigns for different fan pages I run using Facebook Ads. These campaigns are still doing really well because I am targeting a very specific interest group and I’m consistently paying less than $0.05/click. If I can transfer that campaign offsite to similar sites within the niche of my fan pages I bet I’ll be able to get extremely cheap traffic. Of course, I can funnel traffic from my fan page or build a list and monetize it similarly to how I am now.
If you’re going to ride the new traffic source wave you have to be ready the minute the wave is created. The first people to hop on will be the ones who make the most money. You can be sure I’ll be posting about it right after I setup my campaigns (:)) and I’ll definitely be keeping my exclusive subscribers up to date, but you should always keep your eye out for new traffic sources. Keep your eye out and let’s make some money!
Wow, this article is fastidious, my younger sister is analyzing these things, so I am going to tell her.