The Problem with Advertising on Social Networks
February 18th, 2008
I have a problem with my magazines. I only subscribe to three – Fast Company, Fortune and GOOD (and Business 2.0 before they stopped printing it). But it seems that they all come at the same time and I never get around to reading them. Anyway, long story short I sat down last night and read them all. And what stuck in my mind the most was Rob Walker’s editorial on the last page of Fast Company’s March 2008 edition.
The article talks about several things, but the most interested sparked this for me: Advertisers and marketers are so enthralled with social networks because of the detailed profiles the users fill out. With all this information – from age and location to musical and food tastes – ad people are all giddy about the targeted ads they can and do create for users.
But Walker raises the point that as we fill out those profiles, how truthful are we? He points to Tom (your first MySpace “friend”) who has been lying about his age (he’s 5 years older than his profile says). The article goes on to say:
Maybe you’ve guffawed through Dumb and Dumber 10 times, but is that the film you want to announce to the world as your favorite? And even if one of your primary “interests” happens to be losing 50 pounds, you’re probably not going to declare it. Even a lie-free profile probably falls somewhere between incomplete and highly idealized.
So how do advertisers know that their targeted ads aren’t falling on deaf ears?
They don’t.
The lesson to be learned here? Before you sink your precious marketing budget dollars into that social networking site’s banner ads, you might want to think again. Even if it’s “targeted,” it’s still interruptive, a one-way conversation and now, might even not be that targeted after all.
Other posts by Spike.
Scott White says:
I have a Facebook profile and I’ve started a branding group on Facebook. I can honestly say I’ve never once clicked a banner ad. As a matter of fact I can’t honestly tell you the last time I’ve ever clicked any banner ad.
Banner ads are like TV commercials, just a lot of trash.
February 18th, 2008 at 9:35 amGreg says:
Facebook’s Beacon was the answer to that…learn what people value by tracking how they spend their money. The application of that data should go well beyond banner ads.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:42 amJustin says:
Luckily, I block most of that junk with AdBlock Plus in Firefox.
But I’m with Scott. I’ve never in my life clicked a banner ad. I just kind of “tune them out” I guess. They are just visual noise.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:38 amJohn Lane says:
Whether or not you are the one clicking on banner ads, someone is. So change “lies” to the in-this-case-appropriate-synonym “aspirations” and the clever marketer may yet see an opening for a targeted banner ad.
February 19th, 2008 at 12:58 pmDavid Linke says:
The individuals that made Facebook what it is, with hundreds of millions of subscribers, are also the ones that can break it. A marketing strategy that has banner ad’s on facebook as a key component has forgotten the Hulla Hoop and the Yo-yo. The market that you want is ignoring your at the moment and will not be there tomorrow (or next year).
February 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pmJenny says:
while i don’t click on banner ads, a lot of times i do see them and if they are especially eye-catching, i see what it’s advertising. the one thing i get annoyed about though is i usually don’t notice them until i’m waiting on another page i’ve clicked to load and then they are gone and when i hit the back button to see it again, it’s some other ad. the nice thing about facebook is if you do that you can go to the page they have with all the ads on it to see what you ‘missed’ (which is usually nothing anyway).
February 20th, 2008 at 7:41 amD Lawrence says:
Much as I hate to admit it, banner advertising is not dead. But when the creative department, tweaks the dickens out of an ad, so that it does everything but wash your back, its annoying. (ie MSN front page and various other landing pages.) I’m for finding better ways to spend ad dollars, and social nets aren’t always the best way to go. Unless you absolutely need that demo.
February 23rd, 2008 at 1:48 pmCenter Line Idea Log » Blog Archiv » Mobile Marketing: How Not To Tick Us Off says:
[...] no one wants an ad sent to them via text or voice. And (despite what I said and still believe in this comment) I can ignore a banner ad on a mobile version of a website as well as I can when browsing on my [...]
April 29th, 2008 at 6:19 pm