I didn’t immediately see the promise of Facebook’s advertising. I don’t just mean the value proposition to Facebook users, I also mean what I saw when looking at Facebook.

At first, I was presented with ads to enroll in online programs at the University of Phoenix and to subject myself to cosmetic surgery. Hard to see how they are customized to my preferences, but maybe there is some trend discernible in the posts to my Funwall that suggest I’m receptive to such offers.

More puzzling was the online poll asking which team is better: the Patriots or the Cowboys. The question of who is the best football team was definitively answered when the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup, a hot topic for many of my friends who—regardless of whether they were living in Ireland, Saskatoon, South Korea or Toronto—made their allegiance very apparent on Facebook.

In other words, lots of discussion about the CFL in my social network, no mention of the NFL. Not exposing me to an NFL poll should have been a no-brainer for a media channel that is supposed to be obviously different to the untargeted ads and pop-ups that intercept a visit to the New York Times and CIO, or the offers that appear beside Premiership fantasy teams.

I came around on the value proposition after reading eMarketer’s recent article “The Promise of Social Network Advertising” . It reports that:

• 37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011.
• Currently, 70% of all US teens visit social network sites on a monthly basis.
• By 2011, one-half of all online adults and 84% of online teens in the US will use social networking each month.

The value proposition right now is not social network based targeting, it’s eyeballs, which deliver sufficient value that eMarketer projects that worldwide online social network ad spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2008, 82%.

And the organization predicts that “if social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations the flow of advertising dollars will turn into a flood.”

Further reiteration of the value to advertisers of social network advertising came from one of our clients, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. An ad for their excellent blood pressure action tool appeared beside my Funwall one day, which prompted a conversation with our client about the effectiveness of the spend.

It delivered excellent value, she reported. Not only could HSFO target demographics based on user profiles (which is why I saw it, given my plus-35 age and residency in Ontario) they could spend a surprisingly small amount of money to reach me.

The last story made a very positive impression on the London, ON chapter of IABC in a presentation I delivered last week on “Managing Social Media.”

You can download the presentation by following the link below.