Sorry for missing a week of writing, has been a hectic few weeks for me.Anyway, decided it was time to look over the comments that people have left regarding Facebook, Myspace, Performance Based Marketing – curious what people are saying? I was, and you'll find people's comments very interesting.

"Facebook Hates Performance Based Marketing"
Facebook is AOL of the late 90s on steroids. Proprietary and rigid publishing platform. Rudimentary advertising environment. Proprietary chat and email features. "Forums" you can join. Publishers desperately trying to figure out how to leverage the space. An eco-system of third party vendors charging to manage companies "presence" in the environment. AND, a company with a very cocky and arrogant management team believing it has a sustainable competitive advantage when it doesn't. – “Old Skool”

It has become apparent that there is still money to be made through direct marketing but it is becoming near impossible for affiliates to make offers work without very high payouts. Direct advertisers that are using facebook if they are willing to pay a little more can still generate leads(disclaimer: if it falls in Facebook's very strict advertising guidelines which means no giveaway offers, diet offers and many more). If Facebook is willing to make key partnerships with advertisers a huge return can be made for them and also the advertiser through direct marketing. Education should be where they start and as time goes on trickle into other verticals that make sense! – Chris Berbert

"Facebook is AOL of the late 90s on steroids." Well said and if history serves us right, it will be their demise. Like every big oasis we have seen online become a walled garden. Eventually they loose their vision which beings the exploition their own products and members without recourse. AOL, Yahoo!, CNET, MySpace and many others have fallen into their own trap. In fact it was such manipulation of search that opened the door for Google. Facebook is clearly moving in that direction now. Its only matter of time before people either get pissed off or bored with them and move on to the new new thing. – Jack Hurwitz

You'll find the reason that many brand advertisers have not run major campaigns to drive fans as you mentioned above is that just as the practice was starting to be adopted on a large scale by brands FaceBook banned the practice. A number of branded advertisers are engaging users on Facebook but it is more through partners like wildfire and not through traditional agencies who themselves do not seem to "get" FaceBook and continue to propose very bland "in the box" solutions. – LAAdgyt

"CPA vs. CPM"
CPA v CPM debate will rage while clients (and agencies) continue to look at linear performance and not take into account the branding effects of online advertising and the non linear response that this brings.In a recent campaign for a client we tracked fully 95% of revenue through their estore back to ad exposures. Almost no revenue was driven off the direct response to an ad. If that data is not being collected correctly then CPM's will always remain a questionable model for most clients and agencies.- Dick Reed

Its all smoke and mirrors. EVERY ad and affiliate network will pay as llittle as possible. I have dealt with literally 100 ad networks over the years and NEVER has there been one that consistently delivered on targeting or sell through. This is kiss of death has carried over from the MLM model. The more your down line makes, the more you are tempted to take. What I see every time is the network starting out wanting to be honest and make sales for the site, but then it falls to wayside to exploit the publisher and readers to fullest extent. No ad network is going leave money on the table. If they can tire ads on a knitting site they will. Its not the ads, its not the targeting. Its greedy middle men who have broken the CPA and CPM model. – Jack Hurwitz

I've rarely seem any CPA/L campaign back out to a decent CPM. In the UK the decent CPM networks are trying to get into running more CPL as CPM is going unsold and CPL is better than CPA or nothing. Realtime validation is essential so they cannot get away with wanting to be paid on gross. Anyone serious about lead generation knows that only valid leads count. Networks are either ignorant or naive about having to validate leads so I use third party technology so only valid lead counts are passed back to the network in the response code. The result is that networks only do 15% of the leads they thought they could but the quality is high. However they are still obsessed by eCPM and the ad server rules the roost so most CPL campaigns on decent newtorks are never given enough inventory. I'm working hard to get all the potential publisher and advertisers in on lead generation talking the same language - that would be start! - Peter Bell