AdWords Chief Moves to Facebook

Google continue to haemorrhage key staff at an alarming rate. Today Business Insider announced that Google Adwords Operations Chief Grady Burnett is to jump ship and move to Facebook to head up their advertising arm.

Burnett’s departure is one of many high profile cases over the past few months, which have included David Rosenblatt, Tim Armstrong (CEO of AOL) and the suitably named Larry Brilliant, who was in charge of Google’s philanthropic section and now works for Skoll in a similar role. So maybe all isn’t as peaceful as it seems on the good ship Google. That said, ambition and skill set poaching are probably more accountable than any real underlying issue.

However, the big news in all this is that, with the recruiting of Grady Burnett, Facebook have a man who is used to getting eye-watering results for his employers. An old hand with key experience with both DoubleClick and Google AdWords, Burnett could well be the man to refine and push Facebook advertising forward.

With investment pouring in from all quarters and a current market value of $10 billion, Facebook’s stock seems to be on the rise. Revenue figures for the forthcoming year are predicted to be in the $400 to $500 million ballpark, making Facebook one of the most valuable commodities online currently.

With changes clearly afoot, it will be interesting to see how this changes the way in which Facebook shows adverts moving forward. Just as Google AdWords is the dominant force in the search engine PPC realm, so Facebook could become its equivalent within social networking.

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