Facebook's ad traffic is expected to post phenomenal growth - even as its ad prices rise, according to comments made by the company's COO Sheryl Sandberg. Advertisers have taken advantage of the stable pricing, with some of Facebook's biggest advertisers boosting spending 10-fold and a few increasing spending by as much as 20-fold or more, Sandberg told Bloomberg. (via MediaBuyerPlanner).

The surge in spending comes as advertisers have gone moved out of the experimental phase to launching big campaigns.

Ad Sales May Reach $1.4B

According to two people familiar with the situation, Facebook’s sales in 2010 could reach $1.4 billion, up from between $700 million and $800 million last year. Users recently crossed the half-billion mark, making the social networking site a natural fit for marketers, though many are still testing the waters to discover the most effective way to advertise on Facebook.

"A movie studio last year that did three movies with us - this year, if they’re releasing 12 movies, they’ll do 10 of them with us," says Sandberg.

SEO

While much of this growth has been in display, SEO activity on Facebook also holds significant promise, writes Lee Odden at Online Marketing. He notes that comScores June 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings figures show that Facebook search queries have grown from 395 million in January of 2010 to 621 million queries in June, which is almost half the monthly queries reported for Bing (1.7 billion).

For marketers seeking to take advantage of these figures, he suggests the following:

• Pick your page name and vanity URL wisely. Use keywords in the about box when you write your description of the page as well as in the Overview section of the info tab.

• Take advantage of FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to add custom content (text, images and links) that can include relevant keywords that work together with your other keyword use.

• When adding content like photos, discussion topics and status updates, use keywords in titles as appropriate. "Whenever you create a unique page on Facebook such as a discussion topic on a Fan page, there is an opportunity to implement most of the standard SEO tactics you would use with a web page."

• Consider Facebook's latest offering, Questions. Be thoughtful about keywords as you title your Facebook Question and the description. "The more likes you get for your Question, the more like-ly it will show in search results, so make it interesting, descriptive, interactive (add a poll) and promote it to your network. You could also ask and answer your own questions."