Was it ever alive? I think we can easily answer, "Yes" to the second question. But why would I ever even consider it is dead? Recent changes by FB have annoyed many users (and undoubtedly pleased others) myself included. I like to think I'm pretty tech 
savvy, but I just don't get FB's new "timeline" layout. IMHO, they've taken something good and fixed it to broken. If users are unhappy, you can bet advertisers are hearing the fallout.
This week, car giant GM pulled $10 million in ads from Facebook. Just a few days later FB was valued at $106 billion - now $10 mil seems pretty inconsequntial. However, if one giant has seen fit to do this, you can bet others are looking hard at FB's ad model. Interestingly, GM issued a statement on it's corporate FB pages that hey are still on FB, "like" alll their fans back, and will increase information via FB over the coming months.
So is advertising on FB really that bad? Studies have shown the click through rate on ads to be a dismal 0.0051% or about 1 in 2000! Compare this to a CTR on Google Adwords (no friends of mine BTW) of about 0.7 - 1.5%, and you'll see that the ROI for FB is horrible.
Mark Zuckerberg has said, "Facebook was not originally created to be a company ... We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services." Many have foreseen a move by FB to start charging for business pages, which would fit in with Zuckerberg's philosophy. Facebook advertising in it's current form of clickable ads will likely never truly die, but watch out for the pitch out of left field for those with business fan pages. Facebook advertising is not dead, just looking for an additional way to make money off you!
