Online Ads, Revenue | featured news

Facebook’s results illustrated a reality for social media: It’s a soft sell medium in which advertising may not be that interesting or relevant to consumers. This is important because it means the revenue potential for social media companies such as Facebook may not be as high as many people assumed.

Foursquare is rolling out its first revenue product as the company moves from focusing on user growth to generating cash. The new Promoted Updates enables businesses to send promoted content to users. These updates will appear at the top in a prominent position in the “Explore” tab in Foursquare. That’s the section of the app that is for users to find businesses nearby. The Promoted Updates, like Google search ads, there is “intent” there while users are looking for a restaurant, bar or other business nearby, says Steven Rosenblatt, Foursquare’s chief revenue officer. Businesses pay on a “cost per action” performance basis for these ads. In some ways these updates are also like Twitter’s promoted Tweets.

Google Inc's revenue increased 21 percent as strength in its Internet advertising business offset a persisting drop in ad rates, stirring hopes among investors the Web search leader is close to slowing that decline.

Facebook's first-half revenue roughly doubled to $1.6 billion, underscoring the world's largest social network's appeal to advertisers.

Google's third-quarter earnings rose 27% as the company saw improvement in the online advertising market. Revenue rose 7.3%.