Facebook wants to take on television advertising, hard. The social networking platform wants to sell advertising space on the site in the form of a “TV-style commercial”. Advertising in this format could set you back as much as R25 million a day for a 15 second spot.

The ads are Facebook’s way of tapping into advertising budget traditionally allocated to television. Google has YouTube, where original content channels provide a different platform for online advertising.

Of Facebook’s 1,15 billion members, 61% of them are active on the site every day. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook said:

Every night, 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during prime-time TV hours in the United States alone.

The company’s advertising plan has positively influenced their share price.

The price of the spot will depend on how many users the ad targets. Almighty Zuck says users will only be subjected to a certain amount of advertising a day. Zuckerberg said:

One of the things I watch most closely is the quality of our ads and people’s sentiment around them. We haven’t measured a meaningful drop in satisfaction.

[Source: Bloomberg]