Facebook Cookbook

Social Network Advertising with Cubics

Problem

I keep hearing about Cubics as an alternative to AdSense or SocialMedia. What is it?

Solution

Cubics is a platform for inserting ads into social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, and hi5. They both buy and sell ad inventory, so you can work with them to monetize your app and promote it into other apps.

Discussion

Cubics and SocialMedia are fairly closely related, in that they’re both ad platforms for social networking sites (see Monetize, Measure, and Market with SocialMedia). In Cubics parlance, you’re either an Advertiser (you have purchased ads to promote your app or product) or a Publisher (you have an app in which you host Cubics ads). You have the option of doing either CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or CPC (cost per click) campaigns, and they have a bunch of targeting options, as shown in Figure 10-6, that are quite similar to Facebook’s (see Attracting Users Through Facebook Ads).

Figure 10-6. Cubics targeting options

Warning

Again, if you’re running an ad blocker such as AdBlock Plus in Firefox, you’ll have some trouble browsing Cubic’s website. Most ad blocker blacklists have something like *.cubics.com/*, preventing the site’s CSS and images from loading. Make sure to disable it or add some better filters so you can learn more about their services.