No more MSN ads on Facebook

Facebook may have given a telling indication of its planned future direction for advertising on the site when it removed MSN advertising unexpectedly from the site yesterday.  Until the unannounced removal, advertisers had been able to buy PPC ads on Facebook via the MSN Ad Center.  Among other things, the relationship with Facebook as a publisher allowed MSN advertisters to target ads to Facebook users based on their search queries.  It’s not clear yet whether this change spells the end of “search marketing” on Facebook, in favor of a more “attributes-based” approach, which targets ads to people based on who they are, versus what they are looking for.