The fact that it will offer Bebo and Facebook application developers a guaranteed CPM for U.S. traffic to their applications has been announced by AOL’s Platform-A. The CPM is one of the industry’s highest for this inventory. Platform-A, http://www.platform-a.com , is AOL’s advertising business. In May 2008, AOL acquired Bebo, http://www.bebo.com .

The offering is part of the WIDGNET™ publisher network launched earlier this year by Platform-A’s Advertising.com. WIDGNET is an offering that allows advertisers to add fresh inventory to their media mix by placing advertising within widgets and similar applications found in the WIDGNET network. Bebo and Facebook application developers, through WIDGNET, will gain access to Platform-A’s vast base of brand and performance advertisers. The guaranteed CPM rates will apply to the first three impressions for each unique U.S. visitor who visits an approved developer’s application.

Ranging from useful photo manipulation tools to fun novelty games, social networking applications vary in size and complexity. Using proprietary markup language and leverage the core features of both sites, applications are built. Within their profiles, users can add, share and employ these applications. Representing tens of millions of installs and millions of active users, there are more than 30,000 applications currently available across the Bebo and Facebook directories.

Opening its API to third-party developers to integrate their applications with the Bebo site, Bebo launched its Open Application Platform in December 2007. From music and movies to gameplay and photo sharing, Bebo has more than 4,000 applications available to date for the site's 42 million plus users worldwide. And in its quest to make it as seamless as possible for developers to reach their users, Bebo plans to integrate with OpenSocial in the coming months, making it the first social media network to be compatible with both the Facebook and OpenSocial platforms.