Yahoo's board, according to Carl Icahn, is "asleep at the wheel" and under pressure to resign en masse because they can't come up with any ideas to out-smart Google. Meanwhile, Facebook are one of the few sites to knock up something quick and easy we can all play with - Facebook Ads.
I could try and convince you that you can create engagement by dynamically inserting the Facebooker's photo in your ad's...
...but that only happens when you look like a credit crunch model.
With the mischevious tag-line of "Reach your Customers before they start Searching" they have built a wonderful little ad serving suite. First up you have a super AJAX-enabled count engine that gives on-the-fly segmentations. They'll help you identify (if you so chose) the 18-30 year old surf dudes living in Aberystwyth. You then have the option of CPT or CPC and frankly who wouldn't go straight for the performance option?
And that's the clever bit. Facebook have out-smarted Google with their demographic/behavioural Content network ad serving and put micro-targeting into the hands of every marketer at an acceptable cost. So, if I'm promoting a clearance sale at my Aberystwyth surf shop I could knock up an ad and keep hitting these Facebookers for free until somebody clicks. And yes, there are no more than 150 characters to weave your magic but you do get A PICTURE to add to the impact.
I did a tactical, local, seasonal campaign for a client that generated 8,000 impressions and a handful of clicks for a whopping $1.60...about 90 pence all in. Although the ad's are hardly right up there in the "engagement" world you could always link to a coupon or pop in a unique phone number and measure the non-line impact. And with so few ad players out there I recon the cost per click will be really competitive compared to CPC display deals on other sites. Surely too good to be true?
A case of "Reach your Customers on Facebook before somebody else does"