There are Only Two Kinds of Online Advertising: Relevant Advertising and Spam
Posted on 05. Dec, 2007 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Audience Analytics
Alex Iskold over on popular technology blog, Read/WriteWeb has just published a thought-provoking piece on the myth of contextual advertising on social networks like Facebook.
By ‘contextual’ advertising, he is referring to advertising that is served to the user based on information the advertiser has about him or her.
He does not think the contextual ‘Social Ads’ on Facebook work very well because of “[Facebook’s] lack of understanding of its users.”
His argument is that Facebook does not know enough about him to serve relevant ads (or does not appear to use the information it knows about him effectively enough to serve relevant ads) because much of its information is unstructured.
Now, I’m no computer scientist but I beg to differ.
Future of Social Advertising: Potential Pitfalls of Using Social Media
Posted on 27. Nov, 2007 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Audience Analytics
This article is the fourth in a series of articles exploring the future of social advertising.
Click on the ‘Social Advertising’ tag to read earlier posts/articles.
The last post presented the notion of branded content as “the next big thing in social media” and put forward the proposition that brands are better off looking at engaging directly with consumers over branded content on the major social networking sites than creating standalone social media sites if they are promoting new products or services.
In this post, I expand on the potential pitfalls involved with engaging directly with consumers online using social advertising.
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.
The Future of Social Advertising: Social Media and Social Experiences
Posted on 16. Nov, 2007 by Chi-chi Ekweozor in Social Media Strategies
This is the first in a series of posts exploring the future of social advertising.
The explosive growth in social networking, especially amongst the highly sought after 16-35 demographic who are increasingly immune to overt advertising, is prompting widespread experimentation in ’social network advertising’ campaigns.
Global brands like Microsoft, Toyota and Universal Pictures have teamed up with MySpace to deploying HyperTargeting Ads on the world’s largest social network whilst Coca-Cola, Sony Pictures, eBay and more have partnered with Facebook to deploy Social Ads on the world’s fastest growing social network.
Considering it’s less than a year since the notion of ‘social networking’ became mainstream, ’social advertising’ is certainly this year’s breakout success.
