Amid all the outcry over Beacon’s privacy concerns, (like having Facebook tell your wife what she’s getting for Christmas) the simple brilliance of Facebook’s on-site advertising is going unnoticed. Here’s a personal account of how Facebook’s relatively straightforward “sponsored messages” are finally making personalized word-of-mouth a reality.

In addition to banner ads, Facebook now features sponsored advertiser messages in their homepage feed. I rarely look at them, but like all ads you unconsciously take them in with a glance. I decided to click on one that was a new Apple video ad lampooning Vista. Funny and so true. As an XP user who purposely avoided Vista, the message was relevant. It wasn’t going to make me rush out to a Mac store, but I did click the integrated link to post it to my Facebook profile because surely someone else would think it was funny. What followed was a debate with three Facebook friends who were silent Mac advocates. My conversations with them also spurred 2 offline conversations (which I alluded to in a comment posting on that Facebook thread.)

Word-of-mouth on product review sites and bulletin boards is nothing new. Likewise, I could always get a word of mouth reco on any product when I ask someone in my offline (or online network). But this was different because I didn’t intend to start a conversation. I wasn’t seeking an opinion. In this case, the advertiser (Apple) planted the seed and what ensued was an awakening of mac advocates who were people in my closed personal/professional network; these are people I trust far more than any expert on CNET and more than the aggregated opinions of hundreds of reviewers on Amazon. I could also have received this video by email, but it wouldn’t have spurred the same interaction that a small Facebook Thread captured (and preserved) for all of my network to see. Not to mention the analytics that Facebook or Apple could get from this episode.

Here are some guesses at what an advertiser might be allowed to see in the analytics, in order of increasing value.

• Impressions: number of people who might have seen the ad blurb because it was on their feed page
• Video Views: Number of started/completed views of the mac commercial
• Number of forwards to friends
• Number of adds to profiles
• Number of viral views (forwarded link views plus views after posting to profile)
• Number of discussion comments
• View actual discussion comments (tone/subject of the discussion)

So you can see that this starts to become a bit… creepy. Because Facebook is tied to email, it’s of course entirely possible that Apple could one day discover that I’ve purchased a Mac if my Facebook email shows up in their customer system. Of course, it’s unlikely that Facebook’s privacy policy will allow them to do exactly this. But there is precedent where companies match their email database against an advertising site’s database to come up with some anonymous overlap to help them understand penetration.

I’m assuming in Apple’s case that Facebook targeting is in its infancy stage. They may have targeted me by demographic (sex, age, etc.). Is it far-fetched for an advertiser in the future to segment this way:

• Demographics+Network: give me males 25-35 who have a network of FRIENDS who use/advocate Mac (look at their machine platform analytics, behavior, etc)
• Current customers with other products: Look at iTunes activity from Beacon
• Behavior/Ethnographics: Apple affinity actions (video views, comments, etc.) or Facebook groups participation that fit behavior profiles

The sponsored ads on Facebook are intriguing to me. Some of go to Facebook groups (i.e. for a cause) or to a promoted Facebook event page (like a concert, etc). Has anyone placed a sponsored ad on a Facebook feed? I’d love to hear more about the available targeting.