Facebook, Advertising | featured news

Facebook is so large that it now accounts for about one out of every three ad impressions in the U.S., according to the latest statistics from comScore Ad Metrix. In the first quarter of 2011, comScore estimates that 1.1 trillion ads were served to U.S. Internet users, and 346 billion of those (or 31 percent) were on Facebook.

Facebook users who check in to a store or click the "like" button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers....

First they showed up in your e-mail. Then they found their way onto Facebook. Now ads are coming to your checking account.

Facebook said its head of advertising sales, Michael Murphy, is stepping down in December, leaving a vacancy in one of the social-networking giant's key positions.

The social-networking site is aggressively pitching to big advertisers like Ford Motor Co. and PepsiCo Inc. the latest in a series of ad formats that tell users which of their Facebook friends have expressed interest in the brand or product featured in the ad.

Scores of complaints can be found at WickedFire, where advertisers are complaining of massive click fraud and an indifferent Facebook. A few of the recent posts (excuse the language):

Facebook has begun tapping a new revenue stream with the introduction of an internal payments system, a move that might help the fast-growing social networking website achieve profitability while being less reliant on advertising.

There are over 150 million users but the economic crisis is taking and effect on Facebook. The source of all its revenue is from web ads, which and with the global financial crisis web advertising has been hit hard. Because of this "it's not wildly profitable even if it is profitable at all."