I had my first encounter with a Facebook Ad outside of Facebook today.  My initial response to it was very optimistic.  I had just bought tickets to see Battles in Toronto this weekend, and on the checkout page I saw the following ad:

Initially, I was pretty happy to see this.  I figured that I would be able to click on it and see a list of other people who had bought tickets to see Battles, like I would view a Facebook Group.  This would let me see if anybody in my friends circles were going, or meet new people who’d be there.  The ad was actually a link to install the iLike application, which I installed thinking it might lead me to a list of concert go-ers.

I haven’t found the list yet.  Instead I was profiled by iLike on my music listening habits so that they can let me put links to songs on my profile in exchange for likely selling me concert tickets, cds and movies in the future – and probably targeting my friends list as well.

So, here’s my take on this.  Up to now, Facebook has had the strength of linking us in ways that were not possible before to our friends and our community.  We can view what our friends are doing, who their friends are, pictures of them.  We can join groups and meet other people, increasing our circle of influence and helping us keep track of it all.  This has been so useful and successful that it’s our instinct to think any ad associated with Facebook (especially in Facebook’s familiar style) will similarly link us to useful information.  As advertisers fail to deliver on these expectations, it’s going to have an effect on Facebook’s overall trust and appeal.  Soon, like your inbox, it will become harder to tell what is safe to click on, what is useful, and what is just junk.

On a related note, I also signed up as an advertiser in Facebook Ads to promote Poker Underworld.   I’ve chosen a $0.05CPC campaign so it will be interesting to see if this price can deliver me any new players and how popular it will be.  Once I’ve had time to complete the Poker Underworld Facebook application, I’ll link the ad to that instead.  I’m hoping to see nice growth in November after a very strong October.