Friday, February 8, 2008

Doing it right

Students, remember you have to start posting. To give you an idea of what I'm looking for I am doing the first post. The article posted also serves as an example of the type of article you can use for your trade article presentation.

Businessweek has published an article on how users are getting fed up with the advertising boom in online social networks; please read since we will discuss in class. Can this spell the end of advertising in Social Media? Not exactly.

Advertising in social networks such as Facebook and MySpace has simply become an extension of regular web advertising. While it is more targeted, it still is plain and obvious advertising that does not even try to blend into the social media world.

Both Facebook and MySpace committe two major faux pas with their users. Facebook's Beacon which alerted users of the purchases of their friends created a 75K member backlash and led some advertisers to think twice before using it. MySpace went further; it actually started posting on members' sites - converting the personal space into advertising space without the user's consent.

Now more than ever it is obvious that advertising on social media cannot follow the same model as regular advertising. It is not about flocking to the new trend; it is about figuring out how to become part of the community and actually be invited. It's about "how to get invited to the party". Customers are now in control and advertisers need to learn to respect that.

What are your thoughts?

6 comments:

Malorie Davino said...

As a Facebook account holder, I too have come across such advertisements when I sign in. However, it seems as if Facebook advertisements are not as obtrusive as MySpace ads. Usually when I am clicking around, the ads are off to the left side of my page, on the top (blended in with the facebook webpage design) and sometimes on the bottom. I do not find these very distracting and I guess in turn, they are pretty ineffective.

As far as MySpace goes, something obviously has to be changed that allows for some advertising without threatening the users' pages. One of my friends made a MySpace page for me as a joke two years ago because I really did not like the concept of it and I deleted it after one week, aggravated with the random messages I would receive from weirdos I didn't know. I can only imagine how people feel when ads pop up on their personal page displaying their friend's pages!

Advertising in social media, aiming at this "MySpace Generation" definitely has potential benefits to companies world-wide. However, the only way this concept is going to be effective is if these companies find a happy medium of being effective without invading our privacy.

Jessica said...

I completely agree here with Malorie. I don't find it as threatening on Facebook for some reason as I do with Myspace. I too had a friend create a myspace account for me as a joke and it started out fine but lately advertisers have become so invasive.

I am constantly recieving these wierd messages and invitations from people and companies I have never even heard of. Also, Im not too sure how it has been happening but my friends have been recieving emails and posts of advertisements that claim to have been sent by me.

I find this to be terrible and more annoying than anything else. If advertisers have to hack in to your accounts to get your attention and the attention of fellow users, than I think they are going about it all wrong. People are ingoring the advertisements and making complaints more than sales, so all in all, this method is ineffective in my opinion.

Nicole St. Jean said...

As a consumer of social networking, I am not too bothered by these Ads on networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The only Advertisment that are bothersome, are the ones that pop up in front of the screen and sometimes don't allow you to click out of them until you go to their site. I would say this is not only ineffective but could cause the consumer to become frustrated and develop a negative opinion of that particular company.

On the other hand, when it comes to Advertising and Marketing there's always some sort of monetary incentive involved. How are these companies sure they are getting what they pay for? 100 clicks for $10.00 means what? Did someone click on your site by accident? How much profit is your company acquiring as a result of the online advertising on social networking sites? I wouldn't be suprised if there were companies out there that just hired people to click on advertisments on social networking sites so that other companies would loose business. Think about it, how do they trace every click? A company could be executing these types of strategies from 100 different computers! I am a bit skeptical when it comes to measuring the sales or exposure companies are recieving from their advertisements on social networking sites. I personally have never clicked on an advertisement on myspace or facebook, being a user since 2005. Thoughts?

Nicole St. Jean said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kristyn-Anne said...

I agree with Nicole about the internet advertisements. I personally regard most pop-ups and banners as junk and/or some sort of scam. Depending on the site I receive the advertisement through, I may take note of some more seriously than others, but I have never pursued an internet ad directly.

I do not have a MySpace account, but in general I am not bothered by Facebook ads either. The only advertising I had a serious problem with on Facebook was the type mentioned in the article. I made a purchase from Overstock.com (I was not logged in to Facebook at the time)and a message popped up at the bottom of my screen saying that the information of my purchase had just been sent to my Facebook account. I logged in and sure enough the item I bought and the site I purchased it from was on my Mini-Feed. Needless to say I changed my privacy settings right away, as I found that extremely invasive, and am happy to hear that Facebook has since removed that application.

Jim Falvey said...

I have a facebook account, but not a MySpace account. I don't have a problem with the advertisements on facebook. I honestly don't pay much attention to them. And, I could be wrong, but I think the advertisements pay for the site, and without them, we would all probably have to pay to use facebook.