Facebook / Microsoft Deal: First Take

Nate Elliott | October 25, 2007, 12:34 AM

Card has details from the conference call -- but the biggest news from a European perspective is that Microsoft now has rights to sell Facebook's international traffic as well as their US traffic. That gives Microsoft's AdCenter stronger reach and broader inventory (and possibly better behavioral and demographic data?) in Europe, where Google is even more dominant than they are in the US. (Though it's worth pointing out that "in Europe" primarily just means "in the UK" -- as I've said before, when Facebook stresses that 60% of their traffic comes from outside the US, they're really talking about very strong traffic in the UK and relatively small bits of traffic anywhere else.)

But I want to check in the morning (it's late in Berlin) whether Microsoft now has *all* of Facebook's graphical ad space internationally, as they do in the US, or just some of it. When I spoke to Facebook about their international sponsorship programs recently, they were pleased to promote the fact that they could bundle skyscrapers into sponsorships in Europe -- something they couldn't do in the US (where Microsoft owns everything except text links and sponsored newsfeed items) and which I think will be a pretty effective way to both drive traffic to sponsored groups and to boost the prices of those sponsorships. I wonder if Facebook will now lose the ability to bundle skyscrapers into sponsorships in Europe?

I'll post more on this tomorrow, after I've hopefully had time to chat with Facebook and Microsoft, and to digest this a bit. If you're a client and want to talk about this, email inquiry [at] jupiter research - dot - com. If you're press and want to talk about this, email presseurope (at) jupiter research *dot* com.