Tommorrow Facebook is set to unveil a new advertising strategy, and Venturebeat has a source saying this is what they plan to do:
In a project code-named Pandemic, Facebook will remove the somewhat popular “sponsored groups” that advertisers can buy on the site. Instead, it will introduce pages that advertisers can buy, and which can include interactive games or other applications of the advertisers’ choosing.
Pending the outcome of an internal debate within Facebook, these pages may include a number of vertical categories, such as movies, music, restaurants, travel, nonprofits, and others.
Facebook has already developed applications for these categories, that we understand to compete directly with many successful third party applications on Facebook already in these categories.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.
Sure, Facebook is going to compete with its own developers, that’s something any grown up in this business would expect. Mark said as much at Web 2. I am still hoping for something a bit more …. innovative. Hope Venturebeat only has half the story. Or less.