Facebook's engagement ads have been getting a pretty bad rap of late. Introduced in August, the new social ads allow users to interact with advertisements and then share those actions with friends. Facebook is hoping that the new formats will help ring revenue out of the site's popularity, but recent numbers released by comScore put the site disturbingly behind MySpace in terms of ad revenue. However, things might not be as bad as they seem.
Engagement ads, which aIn June, MySpace had 15.9 percent of the display ad spend compared to Facebook's paltry 1.1 percent.
But there are problems with comScore's data, as the media tracking firm readily admits. The numbers, which put MySpace at 52.2 billion ad views to Facebook's 3.6 billion, from June data, were taken two months before Facebook launched its new engagement ads.
comScore has not released data for subsequent months because the company hasn't quite figured out how to track Facebook's new ad formats.
Andrew Lipsman, Senior Manager of Industry Analysis at comScore says they still won't have the data straightened out for another few months. He tells eMarketer:
The new data is not likely to catapult Facebook into the same revenue category as MySpace, but it it does give hope for the future of engagement ads. Though Facebook still has an uphill battle to win over marketers in the flagging economy.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a number of advertisers disappointed with Facebook's inventory. And on Saturday, Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co, said hewants nothing to do with Facebook:
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