Posted By
Digital Marketing Unfiltered on 08/06/2010
Ed: White Horse’s podcast series is
a great way to get the unvarnished truth about all your digital marketing
questions—listen to all of the episodes whenever you like. Below is Part Two of
a recent three-part episode on Facebook advertising. You can also read “Facebook Ads: Just as Hated as All Digital Ads Part 1.” To have
your question featured on a podcast, please send your question to
contactus@whitehorse.com
Craig:
I'm curious about why whole print/offline is much more tolerable. And I wonder
if it's because the failed attempt at trying to personalize ads for you. And a
lot of people say, "This is creepy. Why are they targeting me for this or
that?”
There's
something, not sinister, but just something wrong about how they're trying to
personalize because it isn't relevant, like in the magazine. They get it wrong,
or it just seems like “you know too much about me.”
Eric:
Well, this is the thing. I think personally, the ability to dynamically
personalize ads to people hasn’t been adopted in a way that's very friendly for
consumers. It's ostensibly a great thing. But I'll go to one Web site, usually
because I'm looking on behalf of a client or something, and then that ad will
follow me for months. I'll see it hundreds and hundreds of times. If there were
a whole lot of advertisers with things that I was interested in, and those were
the only advertisers that could advertise to me, that would be great.
Jen:
That's how it feels on Facebook. There are three advertisers. That's a problem,
yeah.
Eric:
As it is, it feels like you're only dealing with a handful of advertisers.
Jamie:
Well, one of the things is that's why they try to get you to “like” the ads,
like you would “like” a piece of content in your status updates on your wall.
But I think the real problem is a volume problem, because they don't enough
breadth of advertisers to give you a diversity of ads in that right channel.
Eric:
That's right.
Jamie:
So then you end up seeing the free sushi offer. Yeah, you saw that one? Or, Got
Pho, which is right down the street from us, which is a great, sort of, case
study. It's this little Vietnamese Pho restaurant that's right down the street
from us. So they're geo‑targeting. It's great. Once I've seen it 15 or 20
times, it's done its job. OK, I'll go, I'll go...
Eric:
That's a chicken and egg problem for Facebook. Because they can't attract
advertisers until they can show that they can get the clickthroughs, and that
the ads on the network actually work. But they can't make the ads work, because
they haven't really shown Facebook users that they can show them relative
content.
Jen:
Maybe, if they just let us not see it after we found the Got Pho.
Jamie:
Yeah, and you can say that you that you don't like the ad, right?
Jen:
Right.
Jamie:
But that feels so...
Jen:
Mean. Because I like the guy who owns Got Pho. He's a nice guy. He makes really
good pho.
Jamie:
Exactly, it does feel mean. I don't care about Mafia Wars. But I'm not going to
take the trouble...
Jen:
That's actually a little bit scary, because I don't want to take Mafia Wars.
You never know.
Craig:
There should be a link that says, "I went there."
Jamie:
"Yes, I've been there."
…
Brian:
To me, on Facebook, what's even more annoying than the fact that everyone's
ignoring ads is the fact that I have friends who have friended me, or asked me
to come through, who are soliciting me to help them out in Mafia Wars, or grow
their garden, wherever. That is more intrusive to me than even the ads are,
so...
Ami:
That's just embarrassing.
Jen: Your page is full of cupcakes and
kisses.
Brian:
The problem with Facebook is what are people really using it for? Are they
really being social now, or are they trying to better their own intersingular
[sic] being on Facebook. It's not like, "Oh, by the way, I know that I
haven't talked to you in a while, but would you just really hook me up, and buy
me this plant?" And you're like, "Are you kidding?"
I
once put out a remark on Facebook one day. It said, "Why doesn't everyone
take the day off from Mafia Wars and from planting a virtual garden or
whatever. Go plant a real garden, or go help someone out, or do community
service."
Do
you know what? I got 25 plus responses from the people who were aghast, and
said, "I can't do it." I hadn't even ever heard from them since they
friended me in Facebook; yet, I elicited so many responses from that. It was
unbelievable, how many people just couldn't do it. Or even the fact that I
posted that; that they had to respond to it. So, the ads are not the problem.
It's the fact of how are you using this in a social environment?
Nobody
wants to look at advertising. You go to a party, and you're having a drink with
someone, or talking, having a conversation, you don't look on the wall and be
like, "Oh, wow, that's a really great advertisement that's hanging over
there."
I
just don't see it. I don't think we can help it. Nobody wants to have advertising.
It's the way things are. It's not really going to go away. I think, for me, if
you have some way of telling you're investing in the media, like, what type of
advertising do I want, or there was some type of opt-in thing.
If
you want to advertise to me, I only want to have things that do good for the
world. And things that are active and going to help the... Forget it, Ami...
Ami:
What I wanted to add was, I do want to do good things for the world. But what I
want to do first is good things for me. What I would love, is if Procter and
Gamble would script me some interesting Facebook content. Hello?
Customized
content, that's what I want when I'm in there.
Eric:
So you'll do that, you'll shill for them?
Ami:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know they feed me content, I post it, you
know to my profile.
Jen:
This kind of goes back to our favorite little pho place, here. We’re Pitching
them up,ok? I'm interested in local opportunities. So tickets that might be
going on sale right there, activity that's going on the next night. I might
look at ads like that. I might look at 20% off; you know, sort of something
following more of the Groupon kind of model—that makes a more relevant choice
to me, would be really cool all together.
Eric:
And those abilities are there. I mean, you know Facebook just came out with
this Friends of the Fan advertising, right? Its promise is that we can make it
local, and we can make it social, and yet that's not most people's real
experiences of being on Facebook. I mean, right now they've got this feature
that you can advertise to anyone who has Fanned a brand, right?
So
if I'm, you know, if I'm a Fan of Coca-Cola, then you know Coca-Cola can advertise
to everybody in my network. That should work, you know, because people are
making these decisions based on the social sphere that they run in; that's how
they're selecting brands.
Craig:
Well, potentially, they have much more intelligence on a user than any other
publisher. There's no reason why the ads shouldn't be the most geo‑targeted and
relevant. They know your gender, they know your age, they know if you're
married or not, potentially, if you set that status. Those ads should be...well,
it is the problem of the chicken and the egg. They don't have enough
advertisers to enable that kind of customization.
Eric:
Well it's, I guess, they were ambivalent for so long about how they were going
to handle what the revenue model was going to be, and how they were going to
handle this, and they were wary of advertising to people, and so they haven't
really built up that credibility, you know; advertisers are still really wary
of them.
Brian:
Well, I guess if someone said, "What would you do to solve the problem
right now?" It sounds diabolical, but I guess I would look at Second Life,
and inside this application where you're growing vegetables, and trying to off
people in Mafia Wars, start putting the ads in there. Because people are using
the content. Instead of being external, you know, put it internally and say,
"If you're opting into it," and clearly people are using this all the
time. Believe me, I know, 'cause they want me to help them out; put the
advertising inside there, and embed it.
Jen:
You could have a, you could have the Jolly Green Giant picking peas off your
vine.
Brian:
That would be fantastic. Exactly. I love Sprout; he's one of the cutest little
mascots in advertising ever, and Pillsbury Doughboy, number one.
Jamie:
And that's why these game companies get these crazy valuations right now. These
game companies are selling for over a billion dollars, and it's within this
Facebook universe right? So outside of the Facebook universe, they don't really
have a business model at all. I mean all they have is what they can do within
the social network.
Jen:
Like Facebook isn't monetizing enough, yeah, exactly.
Eric:
Exactly.
Craig:
There are places where you can go and buy Facebook apps that have become
popular. Does Facebook take a cut of that?
Read
Part One of " Facebook Ads: Just as Hated as All Digital Ads.”
Tags: Media Planning & Buying, Display Advertising, Web Communities, Social Networks
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