Social networking behemoth Facebook today confirmed the poorly kept secret that it has opened an office in Sydney to focus on advertising sales in Australia and New Zealand.
The private company has appointed Paul Borrud as regional vice president to head up its local operations. Borrud previously headed up Facebook's west coast sales in the US. Before starting with Facebook, he was national sales director at Yahoo for the western region.
Borrud will be the direct local contact for Australian brands, agencies and businesses, and will attempt to grow Facebook's share of the local advertising market by making use of the social networking site's over five million Australian users.
Facebook will be hiring a local team to run marketing campaigns over the network.
"We see a lot of opportunity in the Australian market as advertisers look to online media to promote their brands in favour of the more traditional advertising models," Borrud said in a statement. "With Facebook, businesses have the ability to go beyond simple click-throughs and interact with users through friend networks and all aspects of Facebook including applications and pages."
Facebook's sales team also has offices in the US, Canada, UK and France.
I would suggest open HQ in Melb.