Facebook's secret rate card - Valleywag Comments

Facebook's secret rate card

MediaStarz — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:50:50 PDT

A good bit of investigative journalism - something which is rare in the ad industry world. We've asked here to see if there is a UK rate card and will report back. Posted your link on our British ad community [www.mediastarz.co.uk] . I like ValleyWag.com loads we'll keep in touch.

MediaStarz

Facebook's secret rate card

Trackback — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 09:28:55 PDT

That Facebook rate card Valleywag published yesterday? It was from February. And, yes, February was eons ago, but who would have suspected that Facebook would have doubled its sponsorship rates in the meantime? Well, it seems they have. Valleywag's Owen Thomas reveals the June rate card.

Trackback

Facebook's secret rate card

jifjif — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:28:46 PDT

on that note, has any one forgot about the Facebook lawsuit?
[media.www.gwhatchet.com]

jifjif

Facebook's secret rate card

Ron-Mexico — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:01:03 PDT

Major brands like those listed do NOT pay rate card prices - not even remotely close to it. They typically make higher volume deals at much MUCH lower rates. In fact, sales people usually bend over backwards with massive incentives just to book a bigger brand. Even with smaller brands at lower, more-targeted levels we've booked deals for clients FAR below rate card prices. And the prices will only go lower if the site continues to grow. So even if there's more inventory (which will gradually perform weaker as people grow accustomed to the spots) the revenue will not grow at the same rate.

The CPA model has some potential, but I'm not sure the volume is there to scale like they'd hope. Google hit the motherload with the PPC search model (not by inventing it of course) which scales beautifully. The AdSense model was just gravy.

I still think if they try to carry this current business model forward into an IPO there's going to be a collective WTF moment once the revenues are put in the context of the broader market. ALL that hype . . . . for this? You mean this isn't Google 2.0?! Better to sell out to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft who can afford to eat the loss in exchange for gaining eyeballs and marketshare.

Ron-Mexico

Facebook's secret rate card

bgj — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:41:41 PDT

holy jeebus, you can get myspace CPMs for $0.05 if you do some big purchases. Yes, that's 5 cents or 200 times cheaper than facebook. And guess who's easier to market to... mostly scam avoiding, smarter college students, or the geniuses who play at myspace ;-).

I chooset so spend marketing $ at myspace. faecbook seems more like a branding opportunity.

bgj

Facebook's secret rate card

Randall — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 08:35:20 PDT

@Owen: So I guess I should have said "more than just a titty bar," because every now and then we need a little bit of titty, but I'll take advertising slide decks. Call me crazy, but decks just do it for me.

Randall

Facebook's secret rate card

Owen Thomas — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:48:39 PDT

@dula: Interesting -- what do you base that figure on?

Owen Thomas

Facebook's secret rate card

DaveMcClure500Hats — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 21:45:50 PDT

shit owen... i think this could actually qualify as real-honest-to-goodness hard-nosed reporting.

(better get back to tips from drunkards, or someone might mistake ValleyWag articles for respectable journalism ;)

DaveMcClure500Hats

Facebook's secret rate card

Figaro — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:58:46 PDT

There's an app for free virtual gifts..

Figaro

Facebook's secret rate card

dula — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:47:12 PDT

BUt remember, facebook's virtual gifts business is in the 2-5 million range i think...not $20 mil like you said

dula

Facebook's secret rate card

Figaro — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:56:04 PDT

As usual, great story!

BTW, I could swear that about 8 years ago, I saw the identical slide deck that had the exact same business model but the shade of blue was a bit darker and it had that funny triangular looking logo in the corner...

Figaro

Facebook's secret rate card

mcob337 — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:54:28 PDT

Albeit, a different beast, we have paid CPMs as low as .28 on yahoo and .25 on myspace. Only idiots pay retail.

mcob337

Facebook's secret rate card

paul — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:56:38 PDT

Assuming the high end of your CTR range (0.8%), a $10 to $15 CPM range translates into a CPC range of $1.25 to $1.9 (depending on targeting) which seems very high compared with search engine marketing. And this is just to drive traffic to your sponsored group on Facebook, not your own website. So, if your assumptions are correct, I wonder to what extent this propensity to pay is sustainable?

paul

Facebook's secret rate card

ashkan — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:41:16 PDT

One thing though:

- Yahoo! became king of the world wide by mastering the art of selling display banners on CPM rates, in other words, by making pennies off each impression.

- Google overtook Yahoo! by mastering the art of selling text links on CPC rates, in other words, making tens of cents off each click.

History not only repeats itself, it also tends to provide a glimpse into where the spectrum will take us. If the latter is true, then Facebook needs to harness the power of CPA offers, connecting consumers and merchants to take a slice off leads, sales and introduction. If it does that, it will make a few dollars of each connection.

Fitting, since we've dubbed Facebook the Database of Connections…

But giving up the easy money of MSFT guaranteed deal and sponsorships might mean that Facebook will never really deliver on its promise.

[www.watchmojo.com]

ashkan

Facebook's secret rate card

elvenjewel — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:29:53 PDT

Excellent post, top-notch stuff. This gives a real inside look into the world of online advertising, and the cutting-edge at that.

elvenjewel

Facebook's secret rate card

JoshCatone — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:27:58 PDT

That Dave Matthews group has been around longer than 5 months. That screen shot is advertising a promotion for last year's tour -- check the blue title bar on top, it says '2006' (as in, they've been paying for a sponsored group for over a year).

JoshCatone

Facebook's secret rate card

Owen Thomas — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:37:20 PDT

@Randall: Thanks, but you make that sound like an either-or proposition!

Owen Thomas

Facebook's secret rate card

ashkan — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:14:57 PDT

Good work, hopefully no animals were harmed in the making of this post...

ashkan

Facebook's secret rate card

Randall — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:04:51 PDT

Owen,

Really top shelf stuff. I'm seriously impressed with how Valleywag has gone from a titty-bar "who's sleeping with whom" to actual insider information in the Valley. Really great job.

Randall

Facebook's secret rate card

tolles — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:54:37 PDT

Hmmm.

If they can sell 20% of their inventory of a billion or two pageviews a day at a $10 CPM, they're doing just fine.

The big deal here is that even with a *substantial* discount (which is likely), $10 CPM is pretty alright, even with a substantial distance from RPM/eCPM across the site. They really might be able to go public with those kind of numbers.

A+ great leaked material post...Nice!

tolles

Facebook's secret rate card

TheTypeset — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:27:45 PDT

(seriously)

TheTypeset

Facebook's secret rate card

TheTypeset — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:27:39 PDT

Nice job dude...this is very important.

TheTypeset

Facebook's secret rate card

rebump — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:06:12 PDT

At those rates, party likes it's 2002.

rebump

Facebook's secret rate card

bbucy — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:50:48 PDT

"It's OK to lie about having a rate card. Even though were spreading them around like confetti at Mardi Gras there's no way anyone will say something. And if someone does catch on, it won't hurt the company's credibility because people will forget about it in an hour or so."

Classic.

bbucy