FB's IPO is approaching, with early investors standing to gain $9 billion. While this will make some people rich, the IPO is also about FB building an unprecedented global platform that is changing media, entertainment and advertising. However, some question whether FB can improve monetization of its huge user base and turn each user into a profitable customer. Others argue FB is just starting to tap its potential by placing more ads in the news feed, and could generate billions in revenue with small increases in advertising. But skeptics say FB's inability to transform how companies do business means it may remain a niche phenomenon rather than transforming the broader economy.

1. As FB goes public, it's easy to get caught up by the huge numbers, including the $9 billion that
early investors and insiders stand to gain. But FB's IPO is about more than a crew of newlyminted young millionaires buying big houses in Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg built an
unprecedented platform on top of the Internet that's changing the media, entertainment and
advertising industries. And he's become an icon, the personification of what a smart young
person can accomplish using this new global platform.
Larry D Woodard, Graham Stanley Advertising CEO and President
If FB's IPO falls short of investors' expectations, advertising shouldn't take the blame. Sure, FB
is lagging by comparison to Google. According to Wordstream, people are 10 times more likely
to click on a Google ad than a FB ad. On the other hand, FB doesn't yet support advertising on
smartphones or tablet computers, and hasn't really focused on creating a solid advertising model,
choosing instead to focus on the user experience; yet they managed to sell $3.2 billion in ads last
year.
Thursday, May 18
Justin Kistner, Venture Beat
The headlines about FB's so-called "advertising problem" are endless, talking about how CTRs
(click-through rates) are low and that the social networking giant can't seem to figure out how to
increase the monetization of its 900 million users. I wish I could tell everyone all of the front-line
details I'm seeing working with our customers, but I can't. For the skeptics, are you asking the
right question: Does FB have ample opportunity to improve its monetization of every user? FB is
just starting to put ads into the news feed, and there is a wealth of untapped potential there. For
example, FB said it would start by serving no more than one ad per person per day into the news
feed. If it sells its inventory of 500M daily active users, that's 182.5 billion ad views per year. At
just $.02 per person ($20 CPM), FB could rack up $3.6 billion in revenue by adding a single new
ad unit – and for context, FB did $3.7 billion in total revenue last year.
Gloria Goodale, Christian Science Monitor
FB may be the BMOC, but the valuation of the company leaves little margin for error, says
Andreas Scherer, managing partner at Salto Partners, a Washington management consulting firm
and a former executive at both AOL and Netscape.
"From here on out, FB will have to execute its growth strategy with perfection," he says, adding
that the social media phenomenon is in an early stage. "Nobody has good metrics that
sufficiently explain what triggers a buying decision," he says, noting that the industry is
searching for a better model to explain online buying.
Wednesday, May 17
Matthew Yglesias, Slate

2. The premise of FB having such a large valuation isn't just that the company will be successful,
but that it will become much more successful than it already is. Merely getting every single
human being on the planet earth to become a FB user wouldn't be enough for a $100 billion
valuation to be in line with a standard price/earnings ratio of 15. FB would have to turn every
single person into a customer and increase its per customer profits. Is that possible?
Peter Cohan, Forbes contributor
To be fair, there is a bit of good news for those hoping that FB stock will climb after it goes
public. A quick look at Google's 2004 prospectus reveals that its IPO price of $84 valued Google
at a p/e of 80 – the same as FB's estimated p/e (Google had 271 million shares and estimated
2004 net income of $286 million at the time of its August 2004 IPO). That's the only glimmer of
good news for why FB's IPO might breathe some life into the business of VCs and tech
entrepreneurs. But FB's inability to transform the way companies operate their business means
that it will remain a niche phenomenon in the grander economic scheme.
Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo
We don't think any of these numbers (referring to graphic displayed on Bloomberg TV) justify
the evaluation being talked about, and they show a serious slowdown. As you said, the graphic
we put together for Bloomberg average revenue per user fell to its lowest in five quarters, down
at just $1.17 per monthly average user. That's down 13% from the fourth quarter. Every single
metric shows a slowdown.
Alan Patrick, Broadstuff
FB has bought Instagram for $1bn, not bad for an iPhone mobile photo site with c 30 million
users. Is it worth the money? Hell no, its not worth a tenth of it, so what is interesting therefore is
why FB bought it, and why now. GigaOm's view is that it's to knock out a potential competitor, I
think this is part of the truth but not the whole truth, as it were. But it points to the reason – the
FB IPO. FB has about 1bn users, that is about 50% of all the current PC using internet population
globally, so, into and after the IPO, where will growth come from? The other billion? Maybe, but
in general those in the countries where it already exists have got it if they want it, and those who
do want it but can't afford it are too economically uninteresting from an ad-serving point of view.
So the Great Leap Forward will come from mobile, and no doubt its baked into the business plan
for IPO and onwards.
Chris Dixon, co-founder of Hunch, at cdixon.org
Can they find another business model that generates significantly more revenue per user
without hurting the user experience? (And can they do that in an increasingly mobile world
where display ads have been even less effective.) Perhaps that business model is sponsored
feed entries, as FB seems to be hoping (along with Twitter and perhaps Tumblr). The jury is
still out on that model. How can insertions into feeds aren't just more prominent display ads.
Stoke demand and convert people from non-purchasing to purchasing intents. A more likely

3. outcome is that FB uses assets – a vast number of extremely engaged users, it's social graph, FB
Connect – to monetize through another business model..
Nate Elliot, Forrester Research
We've rarely seen a company borrow from its competition as quickly or as well as FB. And that
focus on better serving end users has seen FB grow quickly over the years, even in the face of
consistent privacy concerns. But as good as FB has been at evolving to serve consumers, that's
how bad it's been at serving marketers. In the past five years FB has lurched from one
advertising model to another. Remember when the site charged marketers to host branded pages?
Or when every page featured banners from MSN's ad network? (You may choose forget FB
Beacon; Mark Zuckerberg would certainly prefer you did
My colleague Melissa Parrish and I have been thinking about the FB IPO. Our thoughts:
The world’s biggest social network will complete its initial public offering in a few days, with a valuation based largely on its strong
history of innovation. But we have to wonder: Will FB ever focus any of that innovation on helping marketers?
After all, FB is fantastic at introducing great new features and services for its end users. The moment another social tool gains the
interest of enough users – whether it’s Twitter’s rapid public chatter or Foursquare’s location-based check-ins – FB updates its own
site to offer similar features to its legions of users. We’ve rarely seen a company borrow from its competition as quickly or as well as
FB. And that focus on better serving end users has seen FB grow quickly over the years, even in the face of consistent privacy
concerns.
But as good as FB has been at evolving to serve consumers, that’s how bad it’s been at serving marketers. In the past five years FB
has lurched from one advertising model to another. Remember when the site charged marketers to host branded pages? Or when
every page featured banners from MSN’s ad network? (You may choose to forget FB Beacon; Mark Zuckerberg would certainly
prefer you did.)
Somehow FB still hasn’t stumbled upon a model that’s proven consistently successful for marketers, or that brings in the massive
revenues to match the site’s massive user base. (The company made less than $4 in ad revenue per active user in 2011.) And its
latest ‘big marketing announcement’ in February turned out to be mostly a tiny evolution of its existing ad model. At the same time,
FB often stands directly in the way of marketers’ efforts to measure the performance of their programs.
The result? One global consumer goods company told us recently that FB was getting worse, rather than better, at helping
marketers succeed. And companies in industries from consumer electronics to financial services tell us they’re no longer sure FB is
the best place to dedicate their social marketing budget – a shocking fact given the site’s dominance among users.
The reason, of course, is that FB just doesn’t pay nearly as much attention to marketing as it does to user experience. (Not
surprising, given its founder’s famous loathing for advertisers.) If FB did pay much attention to the marketers who handed it billions

4. of dollars last year, and who make the site’s very existence possible, maybe we’d see innovative new marketing solutions every six
months rather than every few years. Perhaps the company would’ve spent a billion dollars on an ad exchange or marketing
measurement tools rather than a simple photo-sharing app. Maybe, just maybe, marketing on FB would actually work.
But marketing on FB doesn’t work very well, and marketers can’t count on things improving anytime soon. We wish we could predict
this IPO would serve as a new beginning for FB’s marketing offering, and that a new focus on becoming a grown-up business would
inspire the company to put even half the energy into serving advertisers that it does into serving users. But we doubt Zuckerberg’s
going to wake up any day soon having acquired a taste for advertising, or even a proper understanding of it. And so every day more
smart marketers are going to wake up and look for other places to dedicate their social resources
If there is one thing the Instagram acquisition confirmed, it its that Mark Zuckerberg pays no attention to what others think. He
listens, he does learn, but he does not consult with others before acting.
I agree with you that he's not focused on the needs of marketers. There is enormous growth potential here, but they are not
positioned to tap into it.
Unless a new revenues stream materializes out of thin air, this is their biggest challenge in the next three years.
Make FB Compete
Comment from Franca Condo (not verified) on Fri, 06/01/2012 - 15:00
The FTC/SEC should absolutely block FB from buying one of its strongest competitors -- Instagram. Instagram is a photo based
social network that now has 40,000,000 users. its one of the strongest competitors FB has seen to date. FB has network effects.
Without network effects Mark and Co. would have had strong competition a long time ago. Instagram is one of the few companies
that found a hole in FB's armour through its early jump on mobile platforms. It would be a shame to simply watch FB buy away the
competition. Do the right thing FTC/SEC and block the buyout. Make FB compete.
Glad to hear it!
Comment from William Carleton (not verified) on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 10:23
Wow, interesting how different people can have such different perspectives! Social networks can be something more than affiliate
marketing schemes. FB has the potential to totally disintermediate advertising, and that is more exciting than turning it into a yet
another tired, old, ad dependent system. Glad to hear you say Zuckerberg is hostile to advertising - I hope that means the infusion
of ads into user streams on mobile will not be as foregone a conclusion as Sandberg seems to say in the IPO road show video.
Will there be a FB "Big Bang?"

5. Comment from George Colony on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 11:43
Will the day come when Zuck wakes up and decides it's time to make money rather than simply expand his user base? Or will he
use his new found capital to keep growing the network rather than his revenue? It wouldn't surprise me if he pulls a Bezos -- he
builds a company that investors love but which doesn't make much money.
Unfortunately, investors eventually (and this day will come for Amazon) will look for earnings to justify the stock price. It could take
20 years, but that day will come. Examples: Yahoo and eBay.
Yes.. and why has Yahoo
Comment from Andrew Dyster (not verified) on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 02:27
Yes.. and why has Yahoo failed? It forgot about the users. Here is an interesting read on how Yahoo stuffed up with flickr.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/05/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-i...
FB is focused on the user experience
Comment from Rob Leathern (not verified) on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 11:44
... and that's not a bad thing vs. ad monetization.
I was on a panel with buyside investors two weeks ago where a senior person from a major agency told the group that FB had
turned away millions of dollars in ad revenue from them (I asked "was it because you wanted them to allow you to do a homepage
takeover?") - true or not, we've seen them definitely pass over opportunities of the "Times Square Billboard" variety and I hope they
will continue to do so.
I told the assembled group of investors I thought FB didn't really care that much about ad revenue today (that will change), and that
should make investors nervous. It also may not matter from a stock price perspective (again, that will *at some point* change, just
not soon).
We have marketers for whom FB works like gangbusters. We have also seen brands think they've tried FB, been there and done
that and say that it doesn't work for them. Nonsense. We're early on in this game - we're seeing many customers investing 2x to 20x
versus what they did last year. Obviously, we have a business as a FB Preferred Marketing developer that exists because
companies need enterprise-level tools to make FB advertising work for them. There's increasingly features in the FB API that are not
available via their self-service tools, and companies like ours are helping to mine the data and insights available to help companies
make social a successful endeavor.

6. FB is less a publisher and venue for ads, than an "audience operating system" for the web and mobile. Be cautious of over-ascribing
its valuation to today's ad products. They have to do more to help marketers, that I agree with, and believe that companies like ours
and other developers will be a big part of that. We work and have worked with all the major ad players like Yahoo, Google and
others, and FB's pace of innovation, testing, and approach to releasing new ad products and tools in this space is unprecedented.
They haven't figured out their monetization silver bullet yet. Watch out.
'Better marketing' isn't the same as 'more marketing.'
Comment from Nate Elliott on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 13:32
Thanks for the comments, Rob. I agree totally that it's good FB is looking out for user experience - but to position user experience
and ad monetization as necessarily opposing forces is to create a false dichotomy. FB can surely improve value for marketers
without turning the site into Times Square.
The situation's screaming out for genuine innovation - not just dumping ads into newsfeeds and onto mobile devices, or running
homepage takeovers, but actually figuring out new ways for brands to interact with consumers. But yet for all the talk, they're barely
even trying. And not only are they not putting enough resources into helping marketers directly -- but they're keeping those
marketers from customizing their pages too heavily, and preventing them from measuring the impact of their pages properly, as if to
ensure that clients can't learn and innovate on their own either. (Remember how FB asked its users to help translate the site into
foreign languages? Why not use the same crowdsourcing approach on the marketing side?)
But you're right - when FB finds a monetization silver bullet then watch out. And maybe Zuckerberg's figured out that he doesn't
actually have to try - that they've got enough marketing momentum to keep those revenues growing for another couple years
without actually making it work very well, and that'll be long enough for firms like yours to crack the code on FB's behalf. If that is the
case, though, I think they'd better at least turn over a lot more control and measurement in the near future; you can't test and learn
without flexibility and metrics.
Your tone is pretty negative
Comment from Rob Leathern (not verified) on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 13:48
Your tone is pretty negative - curious if they've briefed you under NDA on some of the stuff they have coming up (though I guess
perhaps it's a double secret NDA)? Not buying any of it eh? I think this is going to be a ridiculous offering and the stock will ride high
for some time to come.
You may be right
Comment from Nate Elliott on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 13:56

7. But as you know, Forrester doesn't make calls on stocks. At the end of the day I'm not trying to figure out whether investors should
place a bet on FB, I'm trying to figure out whether marketers should place a bet on FB.
Two final points I"ll make
Comment from Rob Leathern (not verified) on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 14:13
Two final points I"ll make here:
1) Don't think of FB as a marketing platform, think of it as an "audience operating system". Ads are one use case of that because
people typically want to buy based on some audience-related attribute.
2) The biggest problem with marketing as-it-exists is that most companies are not set up to test things, nor to have daily interactions
with their customers. That will change, but probably not right away. We have a couple of customers who manage every "media buy"
via an agency EXCEPT their FB media buys. And they are spending money every single day, in the absence of "campaigns" and
they are learning a LOT about what messages work and don't work.
On (2), watch AMC's "The Pitch" for an example of what I mean. You don't see any of these guys going to the client and saying "We
have 25 great ideas. We don't know which one or two or three are the best, but we'll test them for you for $10k before you spend
$1mm on a campaign around them. Whaddya say???" They come up with one idea, one pitch, one message, one size fits all. This
will change - that much is inevitable- the when and how, is not clear.
FB has a couple of options...
Comment from Fatemeh Khatibloo (not verified) on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 13:34
I figure that the opportunity to grow FBs user base is dwindling at this point; they need to focus, as you say, on increasing revenue
per user. And that, to me, suggests two viable options:
1 - They can provide hyper-targeted advertising solutions to all advertisers (not just their preferred partners). The downfall here is
that FB can't afford to police or advise EVERY advertiser on the best practice uses of microtargeting, which means that they'll
invariably end up with folks who cross the line. And that opens them up to massive user backlash. If they go this route, they'll need
to invest in a service model (which I don't think they know how to do*), and they'll need to get a hell of a lot more transparent with
their privacy policy and practices.
2 - They create a subscription-pricing model that lets users REALLY lock down their data, and opt-out of advertising completely. In
one fell swoop, even if they converted only .5% of their userbase to paying accounts at, say, $5/month, that's nearly a quarter billion
dollars in incremental revenue.
Obviously, these aren't mutually exclusive scenarios. In fact, they sort of feed each other rather nicely.

8. Will users pay to opt out?
Comment from Nate Elliott on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 13:43
Our surveys in the past have indicated that while users don't love advertising, they're also not usually willing to pay to avoid
advertising. They'd rather take the trade of free content for marketing impressions. Still, worth a shot on the paid opt-out, even if they
had to price it as low as $1/month. As I say in the main post, by my math they made less than $4 per user last year - and reports say
that number is sliding: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/12/mobile-FB-and-google-cant-live-wi...
The other potentially huge option is to use that data to power better advertising elsewhere. That'd allow them to keep FB.com
relatively 'clean' - running a relatively low level of advertising and focusing on engagement tools (like better-performing branded
pages and apps) rather than reach tools (like all those little banners and sponsored stories). FB changed their user policy last week
to allow them to do this: http://www.ianschafer.com/2012/05/13/is-this-the-beginning-of-FBs-... (And while former Googler Ari Paparo
correctly notes on that link that Google only gets a fraction of its revenues from this business model, Google still made more than
$5b in 2011 from display ads like the ones FB can now run -- which is more than FB's entire revenue over the same period.)
If I were FB...
Comment from Erin Korogodsky on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 13:41
I'd leverage my hefty platform capabilities and leave users to enjoy their friends and family.
Self serving plug: as a team member at Lithium, I rather enjoy FB's short sided view of the marketer.
Great post.
Generalisations
Comment from Ciaran Norris (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 10:05
"But marketing on FB doesn’t work very well"
Your own post that this claim links to suggests that where marketing on FB doesn't work, it's because they're "too unfocused, too
under-resourced, and don't make enough use of the entire platform."
With this argument, one could equally argue that marketing doesn't work on Google/Yahoo/TV/cinema/insert medium here. But that
wouldn't have been controversial.
You make some decent points about FB's focus on users rather than advertisers (though some would argue that's why they still
have that audience of users), but sweeping generalisations such as this tend to lessen the impact of your point.

9. Plenty of evidence
Comment from Nate Elliott on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 10:58
Thanks Ciaran -- and yes, the marketers on FB need to do better too. But as we state pretty clearly in this post and in the previous
ones to which we link, FB shares quite a lot of that blame. The fact is that even marketers who do put the right focus and resources
into their FB plans find that FB still puts up lots of roadblocks to success.
And if you're looking for detail on this problem, there's plenty to be found. Among lots of other studies, Syncapse reports that user
interaction with branded FB pages is down 22% (http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/things-mark-zuckerberg-cmo/229293/) while
Webtrends has reported significant long-term declines in the performance of paid ads on FB (ie
http://www.slideshare.net/clickcommunity/FB-advertisingperformance). And those problems only cover the shallow digital behavior
metrics that FB tries to focus its advertisers on - marketers still aren't able to measure deeper marketing success metrics in most
cases.
Lies, damned lies and..
Comment from Ciaran Norris (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 11:21
So, a couple of thoughts:
* User interactions with branded pages down? Doesn't surprise me - there's a lot more happening on FB now, so the days of posting
a competition and getting tons of likes are gone. Does this mean the platform is failing, or evolving?
* Long term decline in performance? Well, we manage a lot of accounts, and many still work pretty darn well, holding up against
some of the major performance networks.
* Marketers still aren't able to measure deeper marketing success metrics in most cases. True, but, again, I'd argue you could say
the same of almost any medium where clients or agencies don't invest in research and analytics. I'd argue that FB's partnership with
Nielsen shows a willingness to try to find these metrics, something that can't be said of a lot of their competition.
I'm no FB fanboy, and have no stake in the company, but think that a lot of your arguments could be made against many platforms,
and deserve balancing out.
Another take?
Comment from Joe Ciarallo (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 14:48
Nate, Melissa,
I hope you both have a chance to read our CEO Michael Lazerow's post about FB advertising in Fast Company:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1836466/the-truth-about-FB-advertising

10. Since data was listed in the last comment, I'll add some recent data as well:
Nielsen last quarter released results from 79 FB ad campaigns, and on average, FB’s social ads had 55% higher recall than nonsocial ads.
ComScore has released data that shows FB fans spend more than customers who are not FB fans. In Starbucks’ case, that number
is 8% more non-fans who were also Starbucks buyers.
As our CEO said in his Fast Company post, "In order to succeed, companies need to organize internally and optimize content to get
the right message to the right people at the right time. If the advertiser isn’t organized to connect with people and publish the right
content, failure is inevitable. No wonder some brands continue to ask what FB is doing for them. In reality, these brands should be
asking what they can do for people. Criticizing any platform is easy. Much easier, it seems for many advertisers, than organizing
internally and publishing compelling content."
But what about the small guys
Comment from Micheline Bourque (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 16:57
What about the small businesses that gain awareness through FB Ads and who don't pay millions of dollars? Does your reasoning
still apply? What is the percentage of the money FB makes that comes from big ad payers vs small accounts, anybody know by any
chance? I serve that market and I have trouble with the different figures being passed around in terms of engagement and ad
performance. Any body know anything about the small business side of things? Would love to hear your take on it!
Lot of discussion over .05% of a media budget
Comment from Gary Stein (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 22:36
meh.
Love the Gary Stein comment
Comment from Rob Leathern (not verified) on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 22:44
Mister Stein, I do so miss our chats - whatever happened to that call-in radio show we were going to do together? I'm still game for it
- you, me and Elliott, whaddya say?
I think what Gary's trying to say...
Comment from Nate Elliott on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 10:04
...is that FB isn't the only social media available to marketers. Which is a great point, Gary.

11. Definitely my point
Comment from Gary Stein (not verified) on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 23:36
In fact, FB is far from the only place to spend your online ad dollars. Seriously: GM is shifting a marginal number of dollars away
from an underperforming (for them) site. Maybe GM is absolutely killing it on some other site or network. Or through retargeting
(probably). The only reason this is new is because said-underperforming-site is fixing to go public. In fact, there are probably some
investors somewhere rubbing their hands together in delight. If enough people begin to cast some doubts on the viability of FB's ad
model, their stock's essentially-guaranteed meteoric rise may just be delayed long enough for them to buy low(ish).
absolutely!
Comment from Gary Stein (not verified) on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 23:31
Let's do it. Nate--you are the one with the star power. Hook it up!
FB ads work if.....
Comment from Chris Johnston (not verified) on Wed, 05/16/2012 - 08:31
Too many of the companies complaining about FB ads aren't using them the correct way. FB ads can be targeted with amazing
granularity. If you are GM or Coca-Cola this is a negative because you are trying to reach a very broad audience. If you are a
wedding photographer in a suburb of major city and target fashion conscious brides, who have a college degree, are 22-35, and got
engaged in the last 6 months and live within 10 miles of your studio than FB is your only option to target that specifically.
You also need to be very good at converting those leads once they click on the ad. This may mean creating a different landing page
for every ad or at the minimum every ad campaign. If the ads aren't performing well it may not be the ad, it may be crappy
conversions on the clicks from the ad.
FB ads work. I personally know people dollars of additional revenue a
month that they weren't making before they started using FB. Many
marketers complain about FB because that is easier than building better
campaigns that are more suited to FB's platform. Bolstering its own revenues
by displaying 9 ads per page is not a good long term strategy to retaining
advertisers and helping them achieve actual ROI.
In a culture where everyone wants instant gratification, here is just another example of how people using FB don't have a clue.
Would a company that just hired a new sale rep, fire that same sale rep after a few months because they were not bringing in
"massive revenues"? Get real. The success of FB is a great multichannel, integrated marketing plan where the KPI's are clearly
defined and are appropriately measured. The key is not just PPC but ***** building influence through content and community
and brand awareness. These are strategies that take time and someone that understands how to execute them correctly.

12. FB is not getting worse, it is getting more sophisticated just like any other marketing channel. Our clients are seeing success with FB
and understand the global reach that is currently provides. Only 17% of FB members reside in the United States, the rest are there
for the taking.
A few months?
24
But FB has been selling ads to marketers for more than five years now. As a quick parallel, five
years after Google started selling ads even the least-sophisticated marketers were having
wild success on their platform. Today, 5 years after FB started selling ads, we talk every day
to sophisticated, experienced marketers who are still failing. I'm happy to give FB more time to
figure this out - but it's hard not to feel like they've been groping around in the dark for a long
time.
But I'm glad to hear your clients are doing well - and I look forward to hearing more about your experiences when we connect. I've
heard loud and clear this week that some marketers are having success on the platform - but the large majority of the feedback I've
gotten this week (just like the large majority of what I heard before I made this post) is that most marketers are failing on FB. The
industry-wide data we've seen backs this up. And if FB wants to keep taking billions of dollars from those marketers, it's FB's job to
help them succeed.
FB and Internet marketing -- have not seen FB as an Internet marketing platform,
although a lot of marketers are claiming that they make a lot of money from it, which I
think is just hype.