Advertising in social networks
Microsoft to Provide and Sell Ads on Facebook.
Google signs $900m News Corp deal.
Like a lot of people, I’ve become a heavy Facebook user in the last 3 months. I’m a big one for publishing stuff on the web, photos, links, blog entries, etc, so I have spent quite a bit of time populating my Facebook profile, including adding which films, music, books and TV shows I like. I’ve entered information about my political and religious views. I’ve built my friends list to 75 people. I’ve even imported this blog’s feed into my notes. I’ve gone nowhere near as far on MySpace, I’m just using that for music, so I’ve added a whole bunch of my favourite artists as friends.
Given the rich pool of data available to them, Microsoft and Google are completely failing the social networks in the advertising they provide. Time and time again I visit pages on these sites and see advertising of the most generic kind.
Sticking with Facebook, they know what products I’ve bought in the form of the movies and books I like. They know what other people like and can find common connections. Social recommendations have been around for ever, it’s not rocket science. Add the idea that I might like stuff my friends like and you have another rich seem of potential products I would buy. My political views can be used to select lobbying ads e.g. for green sites, or left-leaning media outlets (I already read TreeHugger and The Guardian, but I’d love to know about special features they’re doing). DVDs, books, films, websites, it’s easy to learn a great deal about my preferences for all of them and yet its completely unused. Rumour has it that Facebook have poor clickthrough rates on their ads. No wonder! They should fire Microsoft tomorrow and build their own ad-serving platform. They would have no problem filling inventory, just look at the rush to build applications.
Instead it’s guaranteed quick response credit card ads, mobile phone networks selling new handsets, drug companies trying to help me quit smoking. Little more than spam. Advertising revenue is the lifeblood of a social network, despite alternatives being pioneered chiefly by Bebo. There’s an untapped pool there for somebody who can mine the profile information and turn into clickable ads for buyable products.
My particular favourite, and the ad that finally got me to write this all up, was an ad for a sexy dating site down the left of my profile page on Facebook. 100 pixels up and 400 pixels over you can read the text “In a relationship.” Now who thought that ad was a good match?