Facebook IPO - What does it mean for Marketers?

No point re-writing what it says in the FT so here's their opening paragraph:

"Facebook launched the process for its highly anticipated stock market debut, filing papers for a $5bn initial public offering that will turn key shareholders into billionaires, most notably Mark Zuckerberg, the 27-year-old chief executive and co-founder."

Based on secondary market trading Facebook is valued at $80billion. Mark Zuckerberg’s stake is worth $22.7bn, not bad for a self made man of 27!

For us mere mortals who earn a crust in digital marketing we are less interested in these numbers than how the funds raised from the IPO will be used. Does it matter that there are new shareholders in the business? Will the strategy change? 

The key fact is less who comes in than the where the control remains. In this instance Zuckerberg and his allies retain 57% of the company, so from a decision making point of view things are unlikely to change any time soon.  The strategy is pretty well telegraphed. Everything they do from “Likes” to sharing of photos, music and video is designed to gather valuable data about users.

These large volumes of data offer advertisers the facility to run very targeted campaigns for which Facebook hope to charge high premiums. Guaranteed audience demographics gives an advantage over Google Adwords, albeit there are still issues about how users relate to advertising on Facebook. Beyond that, many analysts see them offering advertising offsite, a similar model to Google’s Adsense. Pardon the pun, but this makes sense too. 

Will Facebook become more aggressive in monetizing the site? Almost certainly yes. However, as far as the management culture of the organisation is concerned, this will likely remain intact. So the investors are along for the ride and trusting that it will end up as they hope.