So, to stick to the theme I thought I'd write my first blog in a very long time on the pros and cons of banner advertising using social media platforms. I'm a regular user of facebook and I rarely even notice the advertising that is displayed there, but then I'm just one user out of 130million.
Looking at just banner advertising on facebook (not 'fan' pages which is another subject altogether), there are some obvious pro's and con's:
Positives
- Increased brand awareness
- Audience targeting / segmentation by age, sex, likes, dislikes, geographical location etc
- 130 million active facebook users
- Difficult to measure ROI (especially when it comes to brand awareness)
- Banner ads are not conversational
- Weak track record
I like the theory: using Facebook you can advertise painkillers to students in the UK aged 20-25 on saturday/sunday mornings. How can it fail? Yet where are the results? And why isn't everyone raving about it online?
2009 is the year for brand engagement with social media. But this won't come about through simple display ads. What's needed is an approach that sees brands listening and responding to what is being said on blogs and social networks. A good design and a wad of cash just won't cut it any more.
Mr. Goldstein of SocialMedia Networks describes a self-perpetuating cycle in social networks: “Advertisers distract users; users ignore advertisers; advertisers distract better; users ignore better.”
I'm inclined to agree.
2 comments:
Hi Gilly
I don't mean to stalk your blog (!) but this is a really interesting post and I felt like putting my two pence in!
I feel quite affronted that FB has started allowing advertising. I feel that my site it a personal space that only those I allow to can see and be part of. But the introduction of the ads makes me feel like that personal space is being crowded, or lost really, as my personal data has been used to select the appropriate ads to show me.
However, from a brand perspective (and bearing in mind I have been out of this industry for a while) I can see why it would be a very interesting platform for communication with the "youth" market. On the one hand, brands are using a media form that youth is familiar with. They can bombard millions of people with the same ad at the same time, so it offers them a magnificent brand voice for this type of market. It's cheaper than most standard media, can be uploaded within seconds. And even if people refuse to acknowledge the ads in a conscious way (I can barely remember any ads I have been confrunted with. I am merely aware of their presence) subconsciously they will have an impact when the FB users comes to choose which brand or particular product to go for.
So all in all, I'm torn! On a personal note I hate them but from a business perspective, you have to think "why not"? Lets face it, brands need all the help they can get these days and FB is one of the most widespread forum for a market of consumers that are very hard to pitch at effectively and in a way that they can connect with.
Sorry about the ramble!! Clare xxx
I have personally run multiple ad campaings on Facebook. I have used the ads to target an outside website as well as an internal page. I honestly feel it all depends what you are looking to accomplish.
This is one of the ways I gauge siccess from the advertising. After targeting an area, I keep direct mertrics of how effective my ad was directly (click through rate.) as I gain members into my fan page or my external site, I keep a close eye on the activity of both of the locations. For internal page, I get a weekly update about the activity on the page (pageviews, comments,new members, etc.). on the external page, I keep an eye on uniques, avg time per visit, and pageviews per individual page.
If you are tryng to build a Facebook page, I would be weary of simply trying to build your number of fans in the same way you would be weary of simply basing everything off of your external sites visits per month.
best way to try is to run a few ads on a set budget. Keep it specific and keep track of the numbers.
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