Facebook has definitely become a direct marketers dream, and more importantly a dream for all the “get rich” quick bloggers who sell DVDs and seminars on how to make money from Facebook. With its extensive reach and great targeting abilities, Facebook advertising can be one of the top ways to promote a new product launch, or just generate significant targeted traffic to your website.

     After much research and talking to several insiders in the industry, plus some inside data from a company that is tracking campaigns, I have put together the top three ads on facebook in January (so far). The most interesting thing that I found was that there was not one advertisement, one product in specific that was dominating the pack – but instead a group of product with many, many variations often leading to different advertisers.

1)  Mommy/Daddy EDU offers.  For some Scholarships for Dad / Moms websites, created by a variety of EDU companies are one of the top booked ads in January 2010. Perhaps it’s the photos of cute babies with moms and dads, or the thought that in this economy that without an education, you can’t support your children, but these have been some of the most successful affiliate-based offers on the internet, and the biggest craze in Education Advertising.

2)  “Recession Law” debt offers. Obviously based on the current issues, these offers target people based on their state in order to give the feeling that they are specific to that State. Most of them go somewhat to the same landing page, and there are at least 3-4 of these programs that are making the most money.

3)    Not sure why, but for the New Year, the application advertising craze boomed again. While self-promotion of applications has always been a top ad, 2010 has seen huge growth of the advertising on Facebook. Some people told me that with the new rules that are rumored regarding application promotion in the next year, that is already stricter that the current ones, that some applications will be trying to grow their user base extremely fast in order to cash in quickly for a sale, or possible investments.

The obvious conclusion here is that Facebook is being dominated right now by the Affiliate Marketing industry. I’m not the first person to point this out, and won’t be the last. That being said, I’m confused by the lack of brand advertisement on the site. While there quite a few, the ability to use facebook to connect to people, the ability of brands to create fan sites for their products should have brought more brands already to the fold.  Anyone have thoughts?