Two different perspectives on the topic.

Jim Spanfeller, formers CEO of Forbes.com here, and Rory Maher from Business Insider here.

Previous pieces I’ve written:

- ad networks reinventing themselves via product placement.

- publishers and ad networks: tactical vs. strategic moves.

Should Facebook launch an ad network?  I am just not sure.  Sure, they have lots of data on their users, and data is valuable, but isn’t this the Beacon disaster redux?

By the looks of it, everyone is launching an ad network these days, even Publishers Clearing House, who today announced it is launching the PCH Online Network: “Delivering more than 142 million monthly network-wide ad impressions, marketers gain access to millions of loyal and diverse community members with a play-to-win mindset”.

The PCH Online Network consists of six sites that offer CPA and CPM advertising opportunities, including:

• PCH.com attracts more than 13 million visits per month and 50 million page views and serves as a gateway to the entire suite of PCH’s online network.

• PCHGames.com attracts more than two million visits per month and 21 million page views by offering a large selection of casual games in the arcade, casino, sports, strategy and word categories.

• PCHQuiz4Cash.com attracts more than 600,000 visits per month and eight million page views by challenging site visitors to take quizzes and earn cash across a variety of interest areas.

• PCHLotto.com attracts more than one million visits per month, approximately six million page views and roughly 100,000 new customers per month by offering a variety of lotto games with a chance to win up to one million dollars.

• PCHTV.com and PCHtrivia.com are two of the most recent additions to the PCH Online Network with growing audiences. PCHTV.com allows visitors to watch real winning moments for a chance to win cash and prizes of their own, while PCHTrivia.com offers visitors the opportunity to play a variety of category-specific trivia games for a chance to enter a sweepstakes and win cash prizes.

“Through the PCH Online Network we are providing millions of users the opportunity to explore, have fun and win a wide variety of prizes every day,” said Michael Zane, director of online sales and interactive advertising, Publishers Clearing House Online Network. “We’re also providing brand marketers a wide variety of entertaining ways to communicate to a mass concentration of consumers who are in a receptive, winning mindset.”

It’s actually not a bad idea, but it’s not really a network per se, it’s just selling across their own network.