Facebook to make appeal to advertisers for money

It’s been a bad year for social networking giant Facebook, but perhaps things are about to change as CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to make a rare on-stage appearance.

Zuckerberg will face the world’s advertising community this week as the social network strives to generate revenues that and take advantage of the sites 500 million-plus user base.

The media-shy CEO will receive the ‘media person of the year’ award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on Wednesday, following an interview in front of its audience of agency bosses and marketing chiefs.

This year’s Cannes Lions, historically a bit of a booze up for ad execs and creatives, will see more representatives than ever from the companies that pay ad agencies’ fees.

Chief marketers from Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Kraft and Coca-Cola, some of the world’s largest advertisers, will all present seminars at the event, in a sign of the shifting balance of power in ad land.

But agencies and their clients alike are desperate to better understand the world of social media, which is where Zuckerberg will make himself known as the resident expert.

Zuckerberg’s attendance signals his determination to woo the big consumer brands that have historically been wary of advertising online.

But will it work?

Advertisers have long been wary of the fickle nature of social netoworks and their even more so audience.

Just two years after beginning to monetise its audience in earnest, Facebook’s revenue per user is already half the level of that achieved by portals such as MSN and Yahoo, says the Financial Times.

But relative to the many hours most users spend on Facebook each month, its income is “way behind” that of those more established sites.

Perhaps it’ll go down a little easier with a few tumbler’s of whiskey.