This is pretty remarkable: According to comScore data, as reported by the Wall Street Journal and Mashable.com, Facebook displayed 176.3 billion ads during the first 3 months of 2010, or roughly 50 billion ads per month.

This total represents 16.2% of the total number of banner ads served across the entire Web, and puts Facebook well ahead of sites like Yahoo and Microsoft — the latter by nearly triple, according to Mashable.com.

As Connections Media's clients know, Facebook is a powerful and cost effective venue for paid advertising. Clearly, Facebook's strategy of precision targeting and social affinity advertising is proving effective.