Venice Festival Of Media Looks At Facebook

An opening session of the C Squared Venice Festival of Media featured Mike Murphy, vice president, global sales, Facebook, in conversation with media journalist, Jonah Bloom.

Murphy was eloquent and confident as one would expect; ducked a few audience questions on sales revenue (and the proportion contributed via the MSN Sales deal) – as one might also expect; but less than convincing on Facebook’s future “monetising strategy”.

When Bloom suggested that “as an advertiser I could play on Facebook without spending a dime”, Murphy’s response was an honest “absolutely true”. Facebook’s revenues were put at $150 million last year, so the company is hardly struggling but Microsoft’s stake valued Facebook at $15 billion so there is a way to go yet, as Jonah pointed out.

Mike’s all-round responses placed Facebook as a leader – its open platform attracts 200,000 developers; Scrabulous is an example of what can be created as a result (Facebook earns nothing from that); Facebook believes “portability of identity will be key in 08 – 09; and “very few brands can create a viral campaign like Facebook.”

Murphy was able to give us an example of a JP Morgan campaign which created a shared points initiative, and pointed out that a brand could not “sit it out” because brands get mentioned in Facebook anyway and need to be involved positively. He said his internal research disagreed with latest industry figures which suggested usage had peaked, and he apologised for Beacon and hoped it was the worst mistake they would make.

However, we came back to that monetising question. “We care about our users,” he said, “banners is a broken model. We are having conversations with marketers to engage consumers…Facebook can be used for many things, it can be used for development testing or for launching a product.”

So can ITV – and its valuation is going through the floor.

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