Financial Times: "Google blamed the difficulty of making money from placing adverts on social networking sites for holding back its growth in the latest quarter, contributing to a 9 per cent slump in its shares in after-hours trading."
Techdirt has a small round-up of thoughts on the subject.
Content in different media is consumed in different ways. Ads are content. To work in a different medium, ad formats should reflect the medium's particularities. Facebook has made a step in the direction of offering a medium-specific format with Beacon. It might have not succeeded yet, but that doesn't make blanket display advertising on social networking sites any more effective.
I wonder why more ads are not demographic specific. AIM has ads the the bulk of its users on a regualar basis I would say would not use. Thatis just one example off the top of my head. PEW has some great research on users of IM and Social networking. Perhaps this is so obvious of an idea that it has been missed somehow? not sure...
ReplyDeleteAds on social networking sites other than for the purpose of simply displaying the ad in front of the user will never work unless they are part of the conversation going on and perceived not to be ads. Any socail networking site that gets a reputation for planting "social advertisers" in its community to start commercial conversations will probably not last long because of the bad rap it will pick up.
ReplyDeleteForum traffic is notoriously worthless and has been since forums have been around and social networking traffic will prove to be a big worthless fad as well because people are there for social reasons no to look at and respond to advertising. It will prove to be even less effective than print advertising in a magazine. At least with a magazine, the consumer is there in isolation and may be responsive to or interested in the ads. IN social networking it is about the social interaction. Want to try to get exposure for a product of service via social networking, go for it, want to see any sales tracked from it, forget about it.