• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, November 8, 2007

A day after Facebook unveiled its new advertising platform, the reaction to the social network's strategy from marketers, agency executives and others was mostly positive, but not without a dose of skepticism.

Large marketers have embraced the opportunity to enlist Facebook's 50 million members as brand advocates by plugging into the "social graph," the online mapping of physical world relationships the site has mastered.

Among other things, advertisers can now create their own pages on Facebook that allow members to become "fans" of a product or brand and share information with friends through news feeds. Marketers can also target ads based on what members and their friends are doing or buying online, and even send feed updates about what Facebook members are doing on their sites.

For example, through a new service called Beacon, EBay can alert a Facebook user's network of friends when a member is putting something up for sale on the auction site. The whole aim is to turn Facebook users into product endorsers who can spread brand messages virally through their online connections.

"A friend-to-friend recommendation is really about the strongest sales pitch a company can possibly have," says Paul Rand, a board member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and president and CEO of the Zocalo Group, which specializes in word of mouth marketing. That one of the fastest hottest social sites is expanding "conversational" marketing opportunities for marketers will help turbo-charge the field, he says.

Dave Morgan, founder of behavioral targeting network Tacoda, agrees. "I like the fact that they are trying to do more than standard ad targeting," he says, referring to Facebook's new social ads tied directly to members' activities and communications on the site. "Whether they've cracked the code for social advertising, time will tell."

Even stolid traditional marketers such as Procter & Gamble are using Facebook's new ad options to expand their advertising on the site. The packaged goods giant has created a new branded page under the ad program promoting its Crest White Strips teeth-whitening product to college students. "We really see this as an evolving space so we're learning as we go, but we're very excited about the new opportunities," says Kevin Buss, Crest's interactive marketing manager.

Still, it's hard to imagine many college kids signing up as "fans" of Crest White Strips without some type of incentive. "For someone to become a fan, we really need to offer some additional value to the consumer," acknowledged Buss.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about Facebook's new user-generated ad strategy. "I don't think it's the power of consumer endorsement that drives brand relevance," says Charles Rosen, founding partner of ad agency Amalgamated. "If a marketer isn't already projecting itself as a meaningful brand with a distinct message, then going on Facebook isn't going to help."

Of course, such statements could be seen as self-serving, since agencies don't necessarily want consumers usurping their role in shaping brand messages. But even marketers launching with Facebook's ad platform express concerns about potential privacy issues and creating clutter on the site.

"We're going to err on the side of being conservative and subtle," says Sarah Chubb, president of CondeNet, the online arm of publisher Conde Nast, which is placing social ads on Facebook and enrolling sites such as Epicurious.com and flip.com in the Beacon program.