A new Lookery at advertising on Facebook

A couple of Internet entrepreneurs are launching an ad network for Facebook applications, giving advertisers access to the social network’s millions of users.

by Helen Leggatt

Facebook currently has almost 32 million active users and, with around 100,000 new registrations everyday, it’s growing at a rate of 3 percent per week.

It’s no surprise that advertisers are keen to find ways of monetizing this community. Recent banner ad campaigns have yielded disappointing click-through rates so a different approach was needed.

Enter Scott Rafer, whose last Internet venture was MyBlogLog. He has partnered with David Cancel, Compete.com’s founder, to launch an ad network targeted at Facebook users. The ad network, called Lookery, is designed with the designers of Facebook applications in mind. According to recent figures released by Facebook over 75 percent of users have used at least one Facebook application, of which over 1,800 have now been built on the Facebook platform.

Under the terms of Facebook’s new open platform, third party developers are allowed access to user profiles. The data that Lookery collects, while it can only be kept for 24 hours, will enable them to build demographic profiles detailing which users are using different types of applications.

The top 10 Facebook applications, all of which have more than 3 million users, are Top Friend, Graffiti, iLike, Fortune Cookie, Horoscopes, X Me, Video, SuperPoke!, Free Gifts, and Movies.