In a move that could help Social Media giant pocket more revenues, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is testing a way to fit up to 10 ads on a single page from previous of 7.
According to Insidefacebook, they have seen 10 ads appear on permalink pages for posts which have a large number of comments. Even Facebook’s Help center has not been updated with the current discovery, it still currently has six ads, though seven ads have been common throughout the site since January. This format shows up after a user clicks a permalink to a post that has a lot of activity, as against getting to a post through the news feed
Facebook earned $872 million advertising revenue in the first three months of 2012, which is 37 percent increase over the same period last year, but a 6 percent decline from last quarter.
The average price per ad has remain more or less same for the first quarter of 2012 compared to the first quarter of 2011, despite the increase of average price per ad in United States and Canada. According to Facebook, this was largely offset by increases in its worldwide ads; specifically ads in Asia and other countries where the average price per ad is comparatively lower. Europe saw a decline in its average price per ad for the same period due to the ongoing economic crisis in the region.
This all comes after the companies poor show post-initial public offering. The social network site has been desperately trying to up its revenue since then. In one other instance, reported by Wall Street Journal Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is planning to come up with a new mobile ad format targeting people based on their mobile app usage. Advertisers, for instance, would be able to show ads in the news feed for other apps that mobile users might like based on their current app usage. This is sparking fears over privacy concerns, especially since Facebook has been accused of abusing users privacy in the past.
Increasing revenue is fine, but what is not acceptable is increasing it at the cost of user experience. This is a line that Facebook should not cross. The strategy could backfire and drive more users away from the site.
