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back to article Top Facebook exec begs students: 'Click on an ad or two'

Now that Facebook is being scrutinised by its new-found shareholders, it really needs people to start clicking on its ads. That's a fact shamelessly highlighted by Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand woman, chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who was speaking to business students at Harvard University this morning. According to …

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        1. stanimir
          Reply Icon

          Re: I suspect

          Mozilla is substantially funded by Google. You may have a long wait before the mainline releases of Firefox come with ad-block built in.

          I am very well aware. It's not too much money though and even strategically cutting off a great lump of google revenue could be an interesting option for some.

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  2. ukgnome
    Pirate

    Now it's all about the share price

    When do you think they'll start charging for access?

    I actually think that this will happen with a year. I don't think they will charge much, but if every facebook user paid 1$ on top of the advertising this would be quite a money spinner.

    Like most of you lot, if that happened I would close my account.

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    1. JimmyPage Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      @ukgnome

      they won't charge for access *as such* (didn't boy Zuckerberg promise FB will "always be free").

      What they will do, is ensure that there can be a differential between "premium" and "classic" accounts. My guess is that "premium" will have previews of new features, be invited to "preview only" groups, and have fewer restrictions (based on the fact a credit card was used) than "classic". Ironically, I'd bet the first distinction between the two will be the ability of "premium" accounts to opt-out of advertising.

      They might also try and find a way to get commercial organisations to pay for their FB accounts

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @ukgnome

        Since when has a company's promise meant any more than a politician's?

        Facebook I suspect will dive like MySpace and all the rest but Zuck has his cash (enough to see him out the rest of his natural days anyway) so those promises aren't worth Jack now.

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    2. Scott 19
      Reply Icon
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: Now it's all about the share price

      They'll just IGN it and make you watch an advert before you can access the s*it(e).

      Advert closing in 3, 2, 1....FaceBook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Now it's all about the share price

        "make you watch an advert before you can access the s*it(e)."

        Reminds me of another website I used to visit occasionally.

        Some distant connection with this one.

        Some bloke called Magee.

        Can't remember the name, TheRequirer or something.

        Last few visits before I gave up, before entering the site it offered you the opportunity to watch a Dell/HP/IBM/whocares video on the history of computing or similar. Or "click here to go straight to the site".

        I mean, wtf? Top-tier (?) IT advertisers *pay* for opportunities that?

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  3. DJ 2
    Pint

    Every afternoon this week, I've typed

    "Facebook Share Price" into google, and it's bought a smile to my face.

    it's the little things that count.

    and now Beer time.

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  4. LinkOfHyrule
    Coat

    'Click on an ad or two'

    Clearly begging isn't illegal in Massachusetts then!

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  5. TakeTheSkyRoad

    Disappointed

    I was hoping for some "new" in my news but it seems not. Just an article using a speech closing funny as the basis for recycling the news from the last week :(

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  6. Paul Wells
    FAIL

    Isn't that fraud?

    Or something like it? The terms and conditions for most ad networks say you're not to ask people to click on the ads.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Isn't that fraud?

      Occurred to me too, asking people to click when there is no intention to even consider buying sounds like fraud to me.

      6 1
    2. Chris Harrison
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: Isn't that fraud?

      Well if you sign up for google adsense its very clear that you are not allowed to click on ads on your own sites (obviously) and you can't ask people to click on ads either.

      What this facebook exec is suggesting destroys the entire integrity of facebook as an advertising medium. She should be sacked as an example before the advertisers begin to walk.

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      1. LaeMing
        Reply Icon
        Go

        Won't somebody think of the ... advertisers.

        Yes, how many advertisers will be happy paying for clicks that are so obviously solicited and hence not revenue-gentrating? If I was an advertiser, I'd be pulling out immediately!

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    3. David Gosnell
      Reply Icon

      Re: Isn't that fraud?

      My immediate thought also. Any reputable (relatively speaking) ad network will dump Facebook immediately for this soliciting of fraudulent clicks. That looks REALLY good to the shareholders who held their heads resolutely in the sand as even the BBC thoroughly explained what fools anyone buying would be.

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    4. mike2R
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: Isn't that fraud?

      It depends how the advertisers are paying. If they are paying per click then yes, this is blatant ripping off advertisers. The sort of thing that gets you kicked off any advertising network that cares about still being in business next year.

      But if they are paying for impressions or pay for conversions then it isn't - the click doesn't change the cost to the advertiser; if anything it is beneficial to the advertiser since some of the people making the click may actually read the landing page, hence see more of the marketing, hence increased sales.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I signed up to Facebook not long after they opened it to the general public. The younger members of my family use it and as a result the aunts and uncles have joined. I have a few friends who're members too. Beyond a vague keeping in touch utility, I really dislike the user interface which strikes me as essentially unfathomable to all but the very keen users. It's just a very big contact database and not a very well organised one at that.

    The only thing they've got going for them is the game side. I find it intensely irritating to be pestered by people to play some poxy game which seems to be a borderline extortion racket designed to extract cash from the gullible. I'm sure these games will become ever more prevalent and instrusive in the search for revenue.

    I suspect the whole thing is very lastminute.com and the shares will be down 90% to about fair value in a few months. It does have nearly $4 billion in revenue from last year after all, with over $1 billion in profit so I think it'd be worth a punt at $3 a share.

    .

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    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      "I really dislike the user interface which strikes me as essentially unfathomable......."

      That's 'cos it's the personal fiefdom of Zuckerbitch, who understands the way people work in much the same way as cockroaches understand General Relativity.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      $3 a share is too low - but at least you are in the right ball park.

      Roughly - if they are making $1bn a year a normal valuation for this type of company would be around 15bn - so their IPO valuation was about 7x too high - so instead of $38 a share they are probably 'worth' more like $5-6 per share.

      Makes Apple look positively cheap in comparison - they made profits after tax of $26bn (so they made what Facebook made in a year every 2 weeks). Apple's 'value' is $528bn (about 5x the Facebook IPO valuation) yet they actually make 26x more profit - PLUS - Apple have over $100bn 'cash' sitting in the bank.

      So take out the cash and Apple's 'business' is actually only being valued at around $400bn - less than 4x the Facebook IPO valuation for a company making 26x the profits - of the two who would you buy?

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      1. Displacement Activity
        Reply Icon

        @AC: $5-6?

        Your analysis only works if the business is sustainable, and will generate at least the same profits for maybe 10 years, and if the company actually does distribute those profits to shareholders. If all this is true, then your share of the business will eventually start to make real money for you.

        In short, even if FB was at a normal 'fair' valuation, you'd have to be incredibly optimistic to buy in at that price, given that there's no protectable IP involved, and the entire history of the web makes it painfully obvious that the FB product will get up off it's collective arse and walk off as soon as it finds a greener field to chew its cud in.

        Which only leaves one reason to buy in at a stupidly high price - a belief that the market will expand enormously. There's absolutely nothing to indicate that this will happen. There aren't even enough people on the planet to make it happen. And most of those currently left over are Chinese, and nobody in their right mind would expect them to flock to FB when they can do it their own way.

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  8. Nigel 11
    Devil

    Script it?

    Er ... buy some FB shares and then write a script to "click" on FB ads? Then call it the FB share-price pusher and persuade all the other FB shareholders to download it? Or just embed it in an "Angry Birds"-alike app?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Script it?

      Or, do what you've described, but short the FB shares, run your script campaign, then leak out what 'someone' has been doing to pump the FB stock price.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Script it?

        Jeez. That was *exactly* my plan to make a million.

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    2. h4rm0ny
      Reply Icon

      Re: Script it?

      That's all kinds of wrong and long-term would do more harm to Facebook's share price than most other legal actions by an individual could. Note, I don't think you'd need to do that part where you buy some FB shares youself. Isn't that just wasting money?

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ad quality

    So the day I turned 40 I started getting 'mature dating' ads on Facebook.

    Damn them, damn them all.

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    1. Wensleydale Cheese
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Ad quality

      "So the day I turned 40 I started getting 'mature dating' ads on Facebook."

      Sue 'em for ageism?

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  10. oregonensis
    Mushroom

    If I begged for clicks, that would be fraud, and I'd never see a dime from my Web adverts.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Suing

    Suing for being greedy, naive or stupid, or all three?! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

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  12. Anonymous Electronic Warfare
    Flame

    Do This

    A) Use AdBlock Plus

    B) Use NoScript

    C) Take control of your own data: http://friendica.com/

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I disabled ads on facebooks, they ended up getting way too obstructive and excessive a few months ago, such that itd hurt my eyes trying to focus on content :/

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  14. John Savard

    One Hopes...

    that this was a joke. Since advertisers pay for clicks, clicking on an ad if you're not interested in possibly buying whatever it is - just to give the website a boost - constitutes fraud!

    Or, at least, it comes close enough that some online advertising providers view it that way. And that is a fair concern for protecting the value of ad banners and the like.

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  15. Uplink
    Flame

    Ads

    Once they start displaying proper ads, not scams, I'll click on them. I mean, I'm always clicking at least an ad a week, on Google and other sites, if they catch my eye as remotely interesting. Having 20 ads saying "date person with 7 heads", I'm not clicking on them, ESPECIALLY if they say a friend of mine did so. Give me proper ads, that don't tie a click to my profile.

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  16. stucs201

    I click on the ads quite frequently.

    Well, not the ad itself, the little symbol at the side to hide and say why. I tend to go for 'offensive' as the reason. I don't think they've yet worked out I'm offended they think I'm stupid enough to click any old crap they show me instead of going and finding what I want myself when I actually want it.

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  17. samlebon23

    Here is how to get rid of Facebook ads:

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/

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  18. P. Lee
    Mushroom

    you had better get clicking....

    because 100bn doesn't disappear without someone asking for a handout.

    Probably not just FB, but there are banks, pension funds etc

    It isn't all dumb VC and dumber grannies buying those shares.

    You'll be paying for it with your taxes. Better to spread the cost around the economy so no-one goes down.

    Oh the joys of "too big to fail!"

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  19. The Nameless Mist
    FAIL

    Please click on an ad ... please give us $

    in other words in order to keep our share price up and keep us nice and wealthy will you please waste your bandwidth clicking on things that you have little or no interest in, that will inevitably result in your FB profile being "sterotyped" to deposit more ads at you.

    watch me NOT care.

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  20. Kevin7
    Unhappy

    It seems no one has really worked out (other than Google, possibly) how to make a service that's free at the point of use, pay.

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  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The advertisers will be 'well happy' that people are being encouraged to (indiscriminately) click an ad or two to generate some revenue for Facebook. In the long term it's a bad idea as ROI for advertisers would drop and they may stop advertising altogether.

    The whole Facebook IPO etc. sounds worse every day - would you invest in a company where the CEO spends 1bn (their entire profits for a year) on a company that probably also makes little / no money with little regard to the rest of the board. Also rigs the voting rights on the shares so he retains more than 50% - sounds a pretty poor bet before you even look at the financials.

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  22. aiop
    Thumb Down

    Oh dear ...

    what a mess, it'll end in tears - hopefully.

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  23. A J Stiles
    Stop

    Oh, I click on adverts on Facebook, alright

    I click on the "X" and when prompted for a reason why I don't like it, I always answer "Because it is an advertisement".

    The advertisements are served from Facebook's own domain, so I can't even block them.

    Surely I am not alone in feeling I would sooner pay for the Internet than have to look at adverts?

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  24. CraigW

    Growth

    Facebook can now only grow at about the rate of growth of the population as a whole. Other countries are not interested in it / have their own equivalents.

    The time for an IPO was two or three years ago.

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  25. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    I could have told the US stock market something ...

    The vast majority of FB users I know (about) are kids ... well known for their (parents) disposable incomes.

    Or, to put it another way, if you needed a credit card to log into FB, how many of it's "users" would disappear overnight.

    Tulips, anyone ?

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    1. Nigel 11
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      Re: I could have told the US stock market something ...

      Tulips ... or Jesuits?

      "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man". I hope I'm wrong.

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      1. JimmyPage Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Those that do not study history ...

        are doomed to repeat it

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        1. JimmyPage Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          And of course -

          The South Sea Bubble

          which is not a cat, owned by my aunt ....

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  26. John Ford
    Facepalm

    Trash

    Given most of the ads I've seen on facebook are of the scammy 'you've just won an iPad!' or 'You have a secret admirer, click here to find who' variety it's no surprise people aren't clicking. There's a finite amount of morons. I suspect those kind of companies don't pay their bills either.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "There's a finite amount of morons"

      But one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise, as although finite, the number of morons is colossal.

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  27. Ian Ferguson
    FAIL

    Wow, really?

    I wonder how her customers have taken that statement.

    Her customers are, of course, the advertising companies. Facebook users are merely assets.

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  28. Jediben
    Joke

    All aboard the good ship Facebook. Full steam ahead!

    First Zuckerberg, now Sandberg. Next up: ICEBERG!!!!

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  29. Bob Vistakin
    FAIL

    Do no evil

    Google is a litte, ahem, different regarding this - and have a lot more experience. From support.google.com: "Publishers may not click their own ads or use any means to inflate impressions and/or clicks artificially, including manual methods.", and "Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior or placing images next to individual ads."

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  30. adam payne
    Mushroom

    Well Sheryl Sandberg (Chief Operating Officer) I have a one word answer for you.

    NO!

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