Google Partners With Facebook…Wait, What?

I’m filing this one in my, “never saw that coming,” folder. Last Friday Facebook and Google announced that they will be partnering to bring Facebook’s retargeting platform, Facebook Exchange, to Google’s Doubleclick. Google describes Doubleclick as an “ad technology foundation to create, transact, and manage digital advertising for the world’s buyers,” and it gives its users the ability to place and manage retargeting ads from multiple well-known ad exchanges. This partnership will strengthen Google’s placement in the market, and allow advertisers to buy Facebook ads who would have previously had to go through the Exchange, or just not bought Facebook ads at all.

In an afternoon blog post, Doubleclick’s Senior Project Manager, Payam Shodjai, stated, “Partnership has been key to Google’s success as a rising tide lifts all boats. So we’re excited to announce a new way to help our clients succeed by working with Facebook to participate in FBX, their real-time bidding exchange… …starting in a few months, clients will be able to buy inventory on FBX via DoubleClick Bid Manager.”

On the face of it this seems to indicate relations between these two Internet titans are starting to thaw, which is incredibly exciting news for agencies like Big Footprint. Now the only question is, WHEN will these two make Facebook ads manageable through Doubleclick Search? Doubleclick Search is a bit different than Doubleclick proper in that it allows advertisers to directly manage Paid Search accounts from multiple engines in one interface. It’s an invaluable tool for us at Big Footprint, and its bid-management and bulk operation capabilities make it something I can’t imagine managing clients without. So while Facebook and Google get warmed up with this retargeting partnership, I’ll just be over here dreaming.