Following the announcement of Microsoft’s investment in Facebook, Attention PR founder Curtis Hougland shared some thoughts with PSFK about what advertisers must do to succeed on social networks:
- Advertising can certainly be profitable in social networks.
- After all, the holy grail of advertising is micro targeting, and social networks are chock full of people publishing their personal information. You can now even export your friend’s data to a .CSV file.
- However, the golden eggs will most likely kill the goose in the end. This is what is happening on MySpace.
- The effectiveness of advertising and publicity overall is diminishing, because there is simply more competition than even for consumer attention from places like Facebook. Facebook users are already bombarded by widgets, friend requests, newsfeeds, and increasingly advertising.
- If you look at the top performing widgets, few of them are from advertising brands, because they can’t create advertising that is authentic. And its authenticity that allows an advertiser to speak with and not at someone.
- The whole social media system relies on sharing content that has valuable to another individual.
- Advertisers must increasingly create original, compelling and authentic content to succeed on social networks. This is the only way advertising will work in the long-run. In the short-run advertisers will throw good money after bad in the Facebook gold rush.
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I think in the future it will be more important than ever to give people control over advertising. We’re already creating unique content, running blogs, building buzz and connections better than most brands can hope to do.
While some people are ok with not being in controlof what they see, many people (myself included) would like to control which ads they and their friends see on social networks. I would like to be able to choose the ads that come to me, instead of have some system serve ads to me based on what it sees in my profile (though this could work).
Obviously, there’s a risk that when advertisers give consumers control they will choose not to see any ads. But I think a large percentage of us wouldn’t mind seeing relevant content and ads. For example, I’d love to be shown specials from restaurants and bars in my area, discounts on food at grocery stores, be alerted when Nike comes out with a new basketball shoe, etc.
This definitely seems possible, but it’s just a matter of advertisers giving up the control–ultimately, I would think this would lead to much better response rates and consideration for brands, since people get to self-select what they want. It’s ok to be bombarded with information, if it’s good/relevant information that the person is seeking out.
Apologies for the long comment, but that’s just what I’ve been thinking about today.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Great insight, thanks.
October 25th, 2007 at 6:13 pm