Would you ever pay for Facebook? What if it meant no ads ever?
Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone has recently just started using Facebook as he mentions on his latest Medium post, and after having used Facebook for a while he has had a thought...
"They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some special features too. If 10% percent of Facebook signed up, that's $1B a month in revenue. Not too shabby."
Facebook recorded $4.3 billion in total advertising in 2012 (not a bad money maker); however, this would be a far cry from the possible $12 billion they could make a year due to Stone's subscriptions plan. This would then be on top of what they would make from the ads running as per normal.
Furthermore, does Stone think Twitter should have a premium ad free system to get rid of all the promoted trends and tweets? Should users have to pay for an ad-free system? After all, Facebook is the one who fills our screen with the ads.
Facebook should look to target their ads not just at your interests, age, gender, location but also at what page you are viewing or what search you are making.
On the flip-side should Facebook actually make more of an effort to customise ads for us to enhance our Facebook experience? You are probably thinking how can they make them more customised when they already know everything and anything about us?
Facebook need to take a page out of Google's book. Facebook should look to target their ads not just at your interests, age, gender, location but also at what page you are viewing or what search you are making. With Facebook you are predominately looking to explore and interact when on the network, with Google you are looking to complete a task ie searching for a site, brand, topic, information. If Facebook were able to show you ads when you are performing a task on Facebook ie for example a Sony TV ad when you are on the Sony Facebook page or on looking at a new artist page and have an ad to their upcoming show in your city come displayed, would you be more incline to click the ads? Facebook would then be able to target you effectively and in real-time when you are performing a task on Facebook.
Having this form of advertising would allow advertisers to create even more target specific ads, cleaning up the ad pool and ultimately providing a better Facebook experience for the users, businesses and more money for Facebook no doubt.
Would this be a better option for Facebook than users paying for no ads? Or they could do both I guess, they are Facebook and they have the power!
(Too many Facebook ads / shutterstock)