Facebook Gives Ad.ly's Celebrity Endorsement Business the Boot

Ad.ly thinks there’s big money to be made getting celebrities to sell stuff using social media platforms. But it says Facebook won’t let it set up shop.

Ad.ly says that at Facebook’s insistence, it has stopped selling celebrity endorsement ads on the social network, a program it rolled out last year.

Ad.ly is best known for the work it does with celebrities on Twitter, where it says it generates thousands of dollars a month for famous people who use their accounts to pitch products. Its most recent high-profile client: Charlie Sheen, who used Twitter to promote Internships.com last month.

Last fall Ad.ly started selling a similar product for Facebook, which was also supposed to let celebrities use their status updates on behalf of marketers. Here’s a sample pitch:

Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh says Facebook didn’t complain about his ads initially. But he says in March the company informed him that Ad.ly was violating the social network’s terms of service.

Facebook appears to be upset about two things: 1) It argues that in at least one case Ad.ly has created a “fake” profile for a celebrity, which Ad.ly says it needed to do for technical reasons involving Facebook’s API and; 2) it doesn’t want any users using their Facebook profiles to sell stuff, period; it wants that to happen on Facebook user pages. [UPDATE: Ad.ly says they have always used pages, not profiles, to pitch stuff].

I’ve asked Facebook for comment but haven’t heard back yet. [UPDATE: Here's Facebook's statement: "We feel that it is important to take action when we see repeated violations of our Terms and activity that is misleading to our users and partners. Adl.ly was told many times that their activity with personal profiles was not allowed. They nevertheless attempted to circumvent the rules and were caught. We've officially told them to stop, they say they have, and we consider the matter resolved."]

It’s easy enough to see both sides of this argument: Ad.ly thinks it has a product that marketers and celebrities like, and that users are okay with. And Facebook doesn’t like the way Ad.ly does business.

Gullov-Singh argues that Facebook’s decision means it will miss out on a revenue stream, but that it won’t actually stop celebrities from selling stuff on the platform.

“All that’s going to happen is this going to go underground, and people will be getting paid, and it won’t be disclosed,” he says.

But in the end, there’s no debate here: It’s Facebook’s platform, and Facebook’s rules.

http://www.OpenCalais.com kristathomas

Hey Peter – our product was solely for Facebook “Pages” — formerly known as Fan Pages or “Like” Pages.

These are the Pages you create for your company, your business, or your “personal brand” if you are an artist or athlete.

Folks have to opt-in to “Like” these Pages in order to receive messages from them.

EXAMPLE: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/snoopdogg

Thanks,
-Krista
Anonymous

Dude no way man, who thought of that idea?

http://www.Anonymous-Toolz.tk
Anonymous

So is Ad.ly still offering sponsored endorsements from celebs on their Facebook Fan Pages or is this no longer available as well? In the shown example w/ Drake, there was no explicit disclosure that it was an ad — I thought usually Ad.ly required disclosure or were/are the rules different on FB?
http://www.OpenCalais.com kristathomas

That was a sample mock-up Peter had from our initial media kit when he broke the news back in Q4.

Here’s an example from the real test: http://www.facebook.com/KhloeK.....6075953171

One other thing to clarify – we have never created a fake profile for a celebrity. It would make no sense for us to do this, because we already have the real celebrities in our network.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=693221484 Holly Kick

you always have ebay !
http://www.OpenCalais.com kristathomas

Correction re: the update w/ a note from Facebook misspelling our name and misstating facts:

1.) Our product enabled endorsements in artists’ and athletes’ brand Pages (aka Fan Pages or “Like” Pages), not personal profiles.

2.) We did not get repeated “warnings” from Facebook, but rather one Cease & Desist letter, with which we complied within a week.

Finally, Facebook did not claim we created a fake celebrity profile or Fan Page.

Rather, they claimed we created a “fake” Ad.ly profile, which we did to more securely manage the admin access a number of our celebs’ gave us to their Fan Pages when the Facebook API proved unreliable for our needs.

We created that admin profile as opposed to using an employee’s personal profile, based on the precedent whereby Facebook used a similar process to enable our ad buys on their site.

Facebook Gives Ad.ly's Celebrity Endorsement Business the Boot

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