Facebook Paying Users Teeny Tiny Amounts to Watch Ads

Posted on May 6, 2011

Facebook is now paying Facebook users for watching some online advertisements. Payments will be in the form of Facebook credits. Blog Herald says Facebook is paying users one Facebook credit, which has a value of 10 cents.

Mashable reports that the ads will primarily be in social games, with CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate and Zynga as some of the participating publishers.

There have been concepts like this in the past, but they never really took hold. The main problems with the concept are you probably won't get enough people willing to participate because the payment is so tiny. Another problem is people who are paid to watch an ad may not be as valuable to marketers as people who are not paid. They may be watching an ad about a subject they have no interest in just because they are getting paid. Maybe some poverty-stricken FarmVille addicted soles will sit there and watch ads to earn Facebook credits to use on their farms, but it is not clear that this is valuable to marketers.