Cookie tracking: How Facebook could be worth $100 billion?
When Facebook launches its "SocialAds" advertising product on November 6th, the technology will reportedly rely on cookies — unique identifiers sent to each user's computer from Facebook, and tracked by Facebook when they visit web pages.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook walks into its November 6 SocialAds announcement with the story already traveling widely: VentureBeat's report is being picked up in parallel by TechCrunch ('What We (Think We) Know So Far') and All Facebook, which frames the product bluntly as a 'Google Adsense killer.' The $100 billion figure attached to cookie-based targeting is explicitly unconfirmed rumor, but it captures the strategic logic — off-site behavioral advertising is the franchise Google built, and a network that knows users' real identities is claiming it can match or beat it.
The launch lands against accumulating pressure: a federal class-action lawsuit against Facebook was confirmed filed on October 26, and unconfirmed reports days earlier alleged employees could view any profile without restriction, including whose profiles a user visits. Separately, Microsoft's rumored investment is expected to drive up stock-option prices, which sources suggest could complicate recruiting. Privacy exposure and rising hiring costs frame the environment the ads product launches into.
First-order effects
- From November 6, SocialAds reportedly lets advertisers reach Facebook users via cookies planted on their machines and read back when they visit other web pages — converting off-Facebook browsing into targetable ad inventory.
- The product puts Facebook in direct competition with Google's ad network for the first time at scale, exactly as All Facebook's 'AdSense killer' framing anticipates.
Second-order effects
- With the October 26 class action already in court over unrestricted internal profile access, cookie tracking hands plaintiffs and regulators a second, broader surveillance claim to attach to the company.
- Microsoft's rumored investment raising stock-option prices squeezes Facebook on a second front simultaneously: it must recruit engineers to build the ads platform while its equity currency gets more expensive.
Third-order effects
- If cookie-based social targeting performs, platform valuations get anchored to behavioral data harvested across the whole web rather than on-site traffic — the mechanism behind the rumored $100 billion number.
- Litigation and user backlash over cross-site tracking become recurring structural constraints on social-network ad models, pushing the industry toward opt-out mechanisms and disclosure practices that barely exist in 2007.
The trend: Social networks are shifting from selling on-site display inventory to monetizing members' off-site browsing through cookies, and Facebook's SocialAds launch is its opening move against Google's ad network.