Given the Thanksgiving holiday, this week was a relatively short one in regards to Facebook news, however there were still plenty of things to cover. Most of this week’s buzz pertained to Black Friday, which is why we’ve been covering some of the fastest growing brands on Facebook this week.

Facebook Draws Line In The Sand For Third-Party Ad Networks

The most significant story for advertisers this week was probably Facebook’s decision to create two pages outlining approved and banned third-party monetization vendors. Following the recent buzz surrounding aggressive ads on Facebook, the company decided to make it clear which ad networks are no longer allowed to work with developers. It was also a strong statement to those ad networks that want to push the limits of the terms: cross the line and get banned.

New Facebook Homepage Design Spotted

Over the weekend, Techcrunch received screenshots of the latest homepage redesign, which included a significantly different header with an increased emphasis on search. While it’s still being tested by Facebook, there should be a broader roll-out in the weeks to come if the developer roadmap is accurate. The fact that Facebook continues to make user interface changes to the homepage is significant. One can only guess if this is the final iteration of the homepage design.

Toys”R”Us Fan Base Jumps Before Black Friday

Earlier in the week we highlighted a significant jump in the number of fans to Toys”R”Us. There are also a number of other brands which jumped this week which we’ll highlight in a later post. Is the jump in any way tied to increased sales around Black Friday? Unfortunately making a correlation between fans and sales makes absolutely no sense as it would be pure speculation. So why did the page experience such a surge in their fan base?

The most likely reason was that the company ran an advertisement on the Facebook homepage. While there are numerous ways to purchase fans, we’ve seen a number of brands jump over the past week as they run engagement ads to build brand awareness during the busiest shopping day of the year.

Zynga Surpasses 100 Million Monthly Unique Visitors

One other significant story this week was Zynga’s announcement that the company had crossed the 100 million unique monthly active users level. According to the company, this also makes Zynga the largest casual gaming destination on the web. While we don’t have the numbers to back that up, Zynga is most definitely the largest gaming developer on the Facebook Platform.