Facebook turns brands into people, too

Mitt Romney was quoted as calling corporations the same as people.  The public largely saw that as an esoteric tax reference.

However, when Facebook transforms brands and corporations into people, well that’s another story.  The new Facebook brand timeline and advertising strategy has created life for brands, and likely even more fortunes for Facebook. 

Your personal timeline will have more sponsored content from the brands that you love and more importantly – “liked”.  Those annoying dental implant ads on the right-hand side of your Facebook page will be replaced with sponsored content stories from different brands. Ads acting like content, brands acting like people, and all in the socially connected universe of Facebook.

The transformation of ads into timeline content is a win-win-win for Facebook.  Firstly, it solves an obvious problem that the right hand side ads on Facebook is a odd mixture of legitimate brands and low-end junk.  The quality of their ad inventory has not been consistent. Secondly, the only real way to monetize their significant mobile audience is through timeline insertion of content (ads).  This has been obvious from the beginning for both Twitter and Facebook.  They have both now started down that path.  To date, Google has been more successful with mobile monetization through their search products.  Facebook will now try to match that with they social news approach.

The Facebook strategy has a good chance of giving Google a run for their money.  Why? What do people do with their mobile devices that brands care about?  They search and they interact with Social Media – mainly Facebook.

Lastly, this strategy focuses Facebook on large brands that support their social mission.

While there is still a place for the smaller “Mom and Pop” establishments in the Facebook Universe, the Facebook Ad engine is clearly aimed at global brands with significant budgets.  Facebook is, without a doubt, aiming for to be the primary digital ad platform of choice for brands in the future.

The Google Vs. Facebook War just got a lot hotter.