Facebook reportedly has a new advertising platform in the works that will debut sometime this fall, which will finally use facebook’s unique market position to its advantage.  Rather than being randomly displayed throughout the site, as has been the practice to this point (with the exception of the recent ability of companies to keep their ads off certain group pages), advertisements will finally be targeted to individuals by analyzing the information users provide on their profiles.

This is a big move that will certainly give facebook an edge on revenue viability in the social networking world, but the only thing I am left wondering is why it took so long.  Google revolutionized online ads a few years ago by making its advertisements non-intrusive and relevant to the user’s search query.  With a treasure trove of user data, facebook is a bit slow to get this new advertising platform to the market, but better late than never.  If you think about it, the data users provide on thier facebook profiles are truly a marketer’s dream…the more data you can compile on any group of people, the more accurately you can predict their behavior and cater to their specific needs.

The ability to user-target is already available on facebook for its user-created polls, which were launched on June 1, 2007.  Basically, any user can create a one question poll such as “What is your favorite kind of ice cream?” and then select what criteria the response sample needs to meet based on their listed interests, activities, gender, or school.  This results in amazingly relevant data because of its relatively high level of sophistication in targeting a sample population.  This idea expanded to advertising (currently only to be housed in the News Feed, but I see future expansion as a possibility) will greatly expand facebook;s ability to offer advertisers a relevant population to market their product to, which in turn means that facebook can generate more income per click and expand its client-base over time.

As long as Zuckerberg’s crew makes sure that they have a heavy-duty padlock on all user data and do not actually allow any outside access to it, I see this new platform as begin a huge success.  However, there is definitely the possibility that if this is handled incorrectly, there will be a user-revolt similar to the events following the launch of the News Feed…but I think facebook learned its lesson and will make sure it takes care of its own people first and focus on advertisers second.

Wired takes a look at 3 potential problems with the new platform.

ZDNet and the possible privacy implications.

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