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Fab, a social media-driven online retail site, is growing fast -- like 1-million-users-a-month fast -- and it's going all out to propel that growth by buying up the splashiest display ad Facebook offers.

Never mind that some marketers complain about the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook. Fab founder and CEO Jason Goldberg says Facebook ads pay off, and then some. Which is why for a 24-hour period -- which started at 9 p.m. PT Thursday night -- Goldberg ponied up an undisclosed amount to buy Facebook's so-called "log-out" ads that appear when members sign out … Read more

Tumblr has resisted putting ads on its site for years, but little by little the idea of advertising has become more acceptable. Now, the company seems to be jumping in with two feet.

The microblogging site has hired sales guru Lee Brown, according to All Things D. Brown joins Tumblr from his position of senior vice president of national sales at Groupon. Before that, he was the vice president of East Coast U.S. and Canada sales for Yahoo.

Brown is slated to report to Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp, according to All Things D, which should be fun … Read more

Google is pulling the plug on Google TV Ads, the search giant's five-year attempt to revolutionize the way advertising is sold on TV.

The move was prompted by the booming popularity of watching content across a variety of mobile devices, Google said.

"We've made the hard decision to close our TV Ads product over the next few months and move the team to other areas at Google," Shishir Mehrotra, vice president of product at YouTube, said in a company blog post. "We'll be doubling down on video solutions for our clients (like YouTube, AdWords … Read more

Facebook plans to roll out a new advertising tool that will let companies target their ads to existing customers based on their phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

The social network is launching the new tool next week and touts it as a way for businesses to reengage with customers who have already used their services, according to a Facebook spokesperson.

For those who may have privacy concerns over this exchange of personal information, the social network said the process is secure.

What this means is Facebook isn't giving any of your data away, it's taking existing numbers and … Read more

Not long after Craigslist cut off a mapping app that tapped its housing data, the popular online bulletin board has quietly begun embedding maps in certain real estate listings.

The maps, which appear on housing ads in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Ore., harness data from OpenStreetMap, a service that offers free maps of the world compiled and edited by volunteers.

The new feature emerges a little more than a month after Craigslist sued PadMapper, an apartment listings aggregator that collects listings from Craigslist and other services and displays them on a Google map. Craigslist, which has become … Read more

Thursday's tech news roundup is feeling square:

In the search for more money, YouTube is adding video commercials to play before videos on smartphones and tablets. These ads will play for five seconds before users can skip right to the video. As we spend more time on mobile devices, it's only natural for advertising to migrate. Android users will be the first to see pre-roll ads, since the YouTube iPhone app cannot show ads. But that will change in the next YouTube app version for iOS 6.

The Google+ network has updated its sliders. The feature, found in … Read more

It seems to make sense that actor, director, short story writer, and Ph.D. candidate for Yale's English program James Franco would be the new spokesman for Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1. The company is aiming to show that while Franco is a man of many talents, the device can also accomplish many tasks at once.

In a new TV ad for the device, which Franco claims to have directed himself, the actor is seen walking around his house using his Note to look up information with the touch pad, write down messages with the S pen stylus, … Read more