While it makes sense for big brands to establish a presence on the social network, the self-serve platform opened up Pinterest's advertising to a broader group of customers, similar to how Google AdWords lets anyone bid on placements next to Google Search results.
I may have suggested last month that Expedia would look good on the arm of another search engine star, but that is mostly because of the attraction of Expedia's Web 2.0 properties like TripAdvisor.com….As the paid-search leader, Google relies on travel portals like Priceline, Travelocity, and Orbitz Worldwide, to bid for placement on its travel-related search results.
In the first itiration of Facebook's mobile ad network, the company acted as an ad-exchange layer on top of traditional ad exchanges like Mobclix or Nexage that bid for placement on mobile advertising publishers such as Google's AdMob or Apple's iAd.
The big retailers still have to bid for placement on each search term against much smaller companies.
Google, like Yahoo, earns a significant share of its revenues from paid word searches, which allow advertisers to bid for placement on a page that displays responses to words that they believe are most relevant to their business.
Behind the traffic, All Day has another business cooking, which is a tool for advertisers to bid on ad placements throughout its accounts.
Fortune is bidding on that one, too.
On the back end, Facebook is acting as an ad-exchange layer on top of traditional mobile ad exchanges like Mobclix or Nexage that bid for placements on ad networks like AdMob, iAd, or other mobile advertising individual publishers.
Like Google's normal text ads, Advertisers will bid for placement and will be charged when a user clicks on the video.
According to Lester Chu, a Verizon vice president overseeing SuperPages.com, the company will also offer to let advertisers bid for placement and pay only for the ads that are clicked on.
