Here comes consumption marketing, says DMI technology editor, Jamie Riddell. 

The growth of Facebook has been phenomenal. With almost 500 million users (depending on when you read this), Facebook has become the largest of all social networks. But the ambitions of Facebook don’t stop there.

Already, the world’s largest source of banner impressions (176.3 billion impressions in Q1 compared to Yahoo’s 131.6 billion) Facebook has struggled to match the hype with revenue.

Facebook Fan Pages, one of the main brand methods of promotion, are free while the common ads you see on the right-hand side are high volume and often low response, which affects the cost Facebook can charge for these spots. 

Since its rise to search giant status, Google has been working hard to grow the breadth of services it offers the consumer. Despite making the majority of its income when a user leaves the site by clicking, Google has been keen to retain the audience on its own turf boosting the range of connected services from search to blogging, social networks and news.

This is good for Google, as it means it can show you more ads, but also it can start to learn more about you the person giving the opportunity to deliver more targeted advertising based on personal profile, not just what you search for and click on. 

Facebook has collared a lot of press recently, not all of it good. The big news was the launch of Facebook Connect, a tool which enabled any site to allow Facebook integration. 100,000 sites implemented the new connect in less than two weeks. Sites like IMDB, NHL.com, ABC News and Scribd all took up this opportunity. For the user this meant a personalisation of other sites based on your Facebook profile. Every like, dislike, music interest and friend connection added to the information Facebook knew about you. 

So, if I remain logged in to Facebook, it can follow me wherever I go, watching and learning about me. This has raised privacy issues which are important, but we don’t have the space here to even start on it! 

So, if Google knows what you search for, click and don’t click, Facebook will know what you look at, what you like, don’t like, what you listen to, what your friends listen to, what your interests are and so on. 

Take 100,000 sites in two weeks, add to the 500 million users and counting, connect this to an in-depth knowledge of its users, ready to share with advertisers, and you potentially have the advertising goldmine the investors have been hoping for. Forget search marketing, consumption marketing is coming to a strategy near you! 

Since 1996, Jamie Riddell has been at the forefront of UK digital direct marketing. He made his name as the far-sighted, entrepreneurial co-founder of Cheeze Ltd, now part of DMG PLC, the UK’s largest Digital Marketing Group. Now independent, Riddell comments on emerging trends of the digital market with a perspective on the business end of technology. Find him on Twitter: (http://twitter.com/jamieriddell) and on his own blog: (http://www.jamieriddell.net).