Future of Social Advertising: Branded Content and Branded Social Media
Posted on 23. Nov, 2007 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Trends
This post is the next in our series covering the future of social advertising.
To read all previous posts, click on the ‘Social Advertising’ tag.
Three articles into our series on social advertising, I think it is worth clarifying a few terms.
Social Advertising is a term coined by Facebook to describe its recently launched Facebook Ads platform.
Much has been written about Facebook Ads of late including recent reports about potential privacy breaches by third party retail partners who can now use Facebook Beacon to publish information about a user’s online purchase directly into the user’s News Feed on Facebook.
This information can then propagate through the Facebook network through the News Feeds of the user’s friends. It is worth noting that the user’s online purchase is published to his/her trusted network of friends within Facebook and not directly on the internet.
Still, some might find this irksome, especially if they were unaware it was happening.
Change is always welcomed but often resisted.
We are at a cross roads with online advertising.
Technology now allows advertising to be as targeted as an advertiser is willing to pay for it to be. Indeed, next generation Internet TV platforms like Joost are built on the notion that advertisers will pay to target advertising directly to consumers watching content on their platforms because they can now tell the precise split-second when the consumer changes channels.
There’s obviously more to Joost than this rather simplistic view above but you get my point. Much of the ad-supported experiences online are only possible because of the precise targeting now afforded the advertiser footing the bill.
Is it Facebook’s fault that their social network offers advertisers the Holy Grail they have spent so long looking for?
Time will tell whether Facebook’s controversial ‘behavioural’Ads gain widespread acceptance amongst consumers online. It will be particularly interesting to see how much control Facebook allows each user in opting in or out of the current system.
As it stands, users have to opt-out of the system on each e-commerce website maintained by a retail partner of Facebook. I’ve not yet seen a Beacon Ad but I can imagine that it may come as a bit of shock if you were unwittingly featured in one.
Continuing with the term clarifications:
According to the UK’s Branded Content Marketing Association:
Branded content is ideas that bring entertainment value to brands and that integrate brands into entertainment.
It is magnetic brand properties in the form of TV programmes, community events, people, film, video, broadcast TV, narrowband, broadband – linking important passions to important brands with a strategic reason why.
By enabling these new entertainment experiences, brands gain significant fame and goodwill. By creating more value for the consumer, more value for businesses is created.
This post is really about a more prevalent form of social advertising; the combination of branded content with branded social media.
Brands already exploring this include Dove who have extended their Real Beauty campaign to a standalone website, campaignforrealbeauty.com, according to PaidContent.
Global sportswear giant, Nike, have led the charge on this with their highly successful, Nike+ website which acts as a hub for Nike and iPod customers who share and connect over playlists designed to accompany ‘the ultimate jog’.
A casual look on the site shows that Nike+ does allow consumers connect with others over a shared love for jogging and music and … serious sport. The site features several profiles by well-known sports stars including Paula Radcliffe and Serena Williams.
So … the question is? Will it catch on? With social networking already mainstream and widely adopted amongst much of the 13-25 demographic in the UK, should brand advertisers devote time and resources to creating branded social spaces on standalone websites?
It depends.
For strong brands where significant investment has already been made in creating a campaign that has captured the public imagination like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, creating a branded web destination online with social networking features is a sensible approach. After all, social networking features like user profiles and support for user submitted content like videos and photos will power more and more websites going forward.
On the other hand, for brands launching new products or services, a branded social network comes with all the promotional and marketing demands that a standard branded micro site bring.
To gain traction, people need to use the site and to use the site people need to know it exists.
For such brands, it is probably much wiser to invest in creating compelling content that can be published on one of the Big Three social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo) . The benefit is the brand taps into a ready made audience already familiar with connecting with others over branded content and aware of the value exchange that happens when consuming social media.
It’s a trade off between control and promotion. The standalone site offers full brand control whilst a branded page on a major social network is invariably set up under the auspices of the controlling social network.
What do you think? Is a fully branded social network a good investment for brands?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image Credit: www.levidepoches.fr
Related posts:
- The Future of Social Advertising: Social Media and Social Experiences
- Future of Social Advertising: Potential Pitfalls of Using Social Media
- Future of Social Advertising: Determining the Value Exchange
- What Bebo’s Open Media Platform Means For Branded Content Owners
- There are Only Two Kinds of Online Advertising: Relevant Advertising and Spam
This is a great post. I think you’re dead on with the last points about creating a standalone community vs. integrating a brand into existing communities. My feeling is that brands shouldn’t create compelling content that only lives on one site. It should have content that lives on multiple sites. This is why I think it’s not necessarily a good idea for a brand to invest in a Facebook app, and think that is the only solution it needs for social networking.
That said, it really depends on the circumstance and type/size of brand as to whether it should create its own community or put its content on other existing ones. Even i f a brand creates its own site, there’s no reason it should neglect the existing sites. A sale is a sale is a sale–no matter where it comes from.
Excellent post. The average company today already spends about 25% of their total marketing budget on content creation of some kind, whether that be magazines, web portals, videos, etc. Most of the content portals that are created today just dabble in social media components…possibly comments to blog posts or RSS feeds. It’s only a natural extension for these “controlled” microsites and portals to become more “social” as user expectations continue to change.
Those companies that aren’t investing in these types of branded content (what I call content marketing) activities may become also-rans with particular customer bases.
Keep up the great stuff!
Joe
@Jason Peck:
Thanks for your astute and well-placed points. I totally agree with your point about brand marketers needing to recognise that ‘Facebook is not the Internet’.
It seems like a lot of people are forgetting this.
Admittedly, all the attention and hype focussed on Facebook is something Facebook cannot control 100%.
Can you give some examples of brands that have created branded content “that lives on multiple sites”? Would be interesting to know what you think. Brands that have online sales to worry about would make fantastic examples… ;o)
@ Joe Pulizzi:
Thanks for your clear and candid comments.
Once again, we are in agreement.
What is probably really scary for brands already investing in ‘content marketing’, as you put it, is that their ‘groundbreaking initiatives’, designed without any social media input, stand to be overshadowed very soon by relatively simple social media campaigns implemented by smart brand marketers who ‘get’ social media.
Goes to show that the disruptive effect of the web and the unending trend towards ubiquitous digital communications affects everyone, even early adopters.
Any word of advice on how ‘content marketers’ can craft new ‘content marketing campaigns’ that take advantage of the inevitable shift towards content distribution on “significantly more social” controlled microsites and portals. (As you put it…)
That was a mouthful…!
Hope it was clear…
What I mean is, is this something brands should worry about?
Feel free respond here or craft a blog post in response on your site. If you do that, please drop us a comment on this post to say when it’s live and it’ll be put up for public debate ;o)
Same goes for you @ Jason Peck!
I’m feeling generous with my time at the moment ;o)