Facebook claims patronage of top US advertisers

Over 80 per cent of the most prominent 100 US brands are using Facebook to promote their products, dispelling the theory that the social networking site is an unattractive environment for advertisers.

According to Facebook Inc, 83 of the top 100 advertising spenders in the US, as ranked by research groupAdAge, use the site and have signed commercial partnerships. This includes brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola, AT&T and Starbucks, which advertise across the site in a variety of ways.

Many brands also have their own profile pages, which they do not have to pay for, and often boast of several million fans. This facilitates a lot of commercial activity on people's personal pages, often without these people thinking of it in that fashion.

Unlike previous big brand promotions on the web, the ads on Facebook are not splashy displays and banners but more discreet, blending into the overall design of the site. They typically invite users to engage with companies, directing them to pages and applications where they can become fans of the company and receive regular updates.

As a result, Starbucks, for instance, has more than 3.7 million fans on its page, while Coca-Cola has more than 3.5 million. As Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, put it, "If you look at people's profile pages, you'll see a lot of commercial activity even without advertising."

The figures show that advertisers have overcome the initial hesitancy many of them felt about promoting their brands on the popular social network, which boasts of 340 million unique visitors a month. Earlier, many companies feared that their ads would appear alongside inappropriate content.