Advertisers, including Dove, Vodafone and charities Shelter and the RSPB, have complained to Facebook after their ads appeared on highly offensive pages talking about rape and violence towards women.

The brands have found their ads appearing alongside Facebook group pages with titles such as “This is why Indian girls are raped”, “RAPING!”, “Drop kicking sluts in the teeth” and “kicking your girlfriend in the f**** because she won’t make you a sandwich”.  Read More »

For anyone who ever wondered what a real home constructed by Facebook would be like there is now an infographic that imagines just this.

It was created in light of Facebook’s announcement last week about Facebook Home, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is designed to put “people first instead of apps”. Read More »

Facebook has released its first TV ad to promote its Facebook Home software on Android, which it announced at a launch event last week.

The ad, which was created by Widen + Kennedy and only its second to date, features a rather surreal set of events where a traveller boarding a plane sees his photos come to life.

Sunbathers reading magazines are discovered inside the hand luggage compartments, a drag queen cabaret appears from the attendant’s service cart, the traveller’s nephew pops up covered in chocolate cake, and cats leap from seat to seat. Read More »

On the day that Facebook is expected to announce the Facebook phone, it is being predicted that almost 30% of all mobile display ads will go to the social network this year.

Facebook, which is the number-two mobile ad destination in the US, accounted for 9.5% of mobile ad revenues in 2012 and is expected to take 13.2% this year, according to eMarketer. Read More »

The belief of WPP’s chief executive Martin Sorrell that Twitter is more a PR medium for brands, rather than an advertising opportunity, has been widely shot down by rival agencies and social media practitioners.

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“Goodbye clutter. Hello bright, beautiful stories.”

That’s how Facebook has positioned its revamped news feed announced Thursday. Facebook set out to breathe new life into the news feed and give it a cleaner, fresher, more visual appeal and personally I think they’ve got it spot on.

In case you missed it, here is what I would take as the key points of the new design: Separate content feeds; More visual design; Consistent look across devices; and More prominence to other social apps. Read More »

Facebook has unveiled a major new look to its News Feed, the most significant change since the launch of Facebook Timelines, that it promises will reduce clutter and focus more on stories from friends and family.

As predicted advertisers also get more as the bigger images reported yesterday are set to be introduced.
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Recently, Facebook announced its new graph search tool, which allows users to search through interests, locations and recommendations of Friends and connections. While some may be heralding this as a threat to Google or a sign that Facebook will soon dominate in search, it is by no means the end-all and be-all. Marketers should think of graph search as a new tool to better reach their audience – one that needs to be employed with existing SEO practices rather than working in competition.

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Facebook has bought the advertising-measurement platform Atlas from Microsoft for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition shows that Facebook sees its focus on competing with Google and growing its advertising business, and the ability to gain far greater measurement data will help it do that. Read More »

Every time I pick up a newspaper just lately there’s another story about Facebook – as the world’s largest social network it’s obviously going to attract controversy and last week was no different, as The Sun ran a story on how bookies are ‘buying advertising space which appears on children’s Facebook news feeds’.  Even though, of course, children aren’t the target demographic.   Read More »