Posted By
Digital Marketing Unfiltered on 08/11/2010
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 3 of a
recent three-part episode on Facebook advertising. You can also read the
previous posts of “Facebook Ads: Just as Hated as All Digital Ads Part 1” and Part 2. To have your question
featured on a podcast, please send your question to contactus@whitehorse.com.
Brian:
But how cool would it be if you were playing Farmville, and you got an ad for City
Harvest?
Eric:
Oh, excellent.
Brian:
Right? Because you're so interested in growing vegetables online, yet you're
not really doing it in the real world. I mean it's a way of like, "What's
the model going to be here, and how do you make it acceptable or get people
used to it?"If you're going to do good, that's great. If you want to sell
product, sell product, but make it timely. If you want to sell, you know, a
Smith and Wesson, then please, put it in Mafia Wars.
Craig:
Right. Why wouldn't, why wouldn't, like the Plant a Tree Foundation in Portland,
get a list of people who are playing Save the Green or Save the Amazon Forest,
right? People who are playing it the most, you advertise on, through that app
somehow, that does it, right?
Eric:
Well, that's right. I was just thinking Facebook hasn't really probed those
opportunities as much as they could, you know. There is more; there's a lot
more contextual relevance that they could put into the experience.
Ami:
What if you're given the option to opt into certain categories? Niche
categories of advertising?
For
example, I'm happy to hear from skier manufacturers at any point, cycling
manufacturers. Like Jen said, local ticket vendors and that kind of thing. What
if you could actually detail your advertising portfolio to that level?
Eric:
Well, I think part of the problem is, like if I'm an ad rep for Facebook, I
don't want to sell that way, you know, I don't want to sell.
Jen:
You don't want to sell to mom and pops.
Eric:
Yeah, I want to be able to show. I think having those niches in the profiles
would allow some very niche advertisers to come in and do that. The people who
have a diet solution and figure that they’re for everybody, they still are
going to want to be able to blast to everybody. So you still end up being
exposed to a lot of irrelevant material.
Ami: Right, but premium advertisers
might pay the CPL to get to the people who opt in. So when that's…
Jen:
Have you ever clicked on a Facebook ad?
Jamie:
Yeah, I have.
Brian:
Yeah, I wanted to know who was looking for me. [laughter]
You
want to know what I found out. Nobody!
Not
even the cute looking girl in the ad that made me look at in the first place.
And I even tried the buff guy, and he wasn't looking for me either.
Jen:
I suppose they were looking for me, with kids, without kids, but I’m afraid to
click.
Brian:
But I am in this case, so I am totally like the one thousandth percent of the
people who investigate these things because it is my job to do so. So I am an idiot
because I get paid to be an idiot. I have to look at the stuff. I am on
Facebook because it is part of my job. Do I voluntarily want to be on Facebook?
No, not really. I like to interact with people and talk to them on the phone.
Email them, and write them letters, and Skype. I am on Facebook. I am not that
active on Facebook. But I learn through Facebook. And I think it is an
important thing for us. I like to socialize personally with people.
Eric:
Without Facebook, though, you would have had to wait till this morning to find
out that our CTO fell off a ladder. You wouldn't have known that. So...
Brian:
I didn't know. I didn't know that.
Eric:
He did.
Jen:
He unfriended me, so I didn't know that.
Ami:
I can't believe he fell of a ladder.
Jamie:
Face plant. [laughter]
Fascinating
thing about it is, people are so much more accepting in print and on television
of advertising. They have had 50, 75, or 100 years to get used to the idea that
this content has been paid for in some way. From the user standpoint, Facebook
is all user-generated content. So nobody is getting paid to generate that
content.
So
from their standpoint, the interface and the way that it is structured is very user-friendly,
is very clean looking.
So then,
that, by definition, means that it must be very simple to implement and
maintain. People don't make the connection between there is the content
generators, there is the platform, and then there is me as a user. They don't
see that the platform is playing a valuable role in the process.
Eric:
I think, too, that from the beginnings of television, advertisers played this
really integral role. At the very beginning, it was all this very direct
relationship between the show and the advertiser, and it has slowly turned into
this thing where it is more about these discrete breaks where you expect to see
this commercial content. Online has never had that opportunity. From the very beginning,
online advertising is ghettoized. Publishers push it to the side; you don't
want to see it; you are forced to do these very intrusive things in order to
get the attention.
We've
never really had…I think it is finally coming around now to where online
advertisers get some true reciprocal relationships with publishers in a way
that shows them in the right light. Otherwise, you are just pushing messages at
people.
Brian:
Without the print numbers, the fact that you say 20% of the people want it, and
they say in print it's 40. I have done print advertising and interactive
advertising. I still think the print numbers are baked.
Eric:
Yeah.
Brian:
I mean, how do you know?
Eric:
I think this measuring is an annoyance factor, and I think it is easy; one is
less annoyed by advertising in print. So it really is just so easy to ignore.
Ami:
We need to recondition digital audiences. I think that's where we've landed.
Jamie:
Except for when the card stock is nine mm thick. You can't avoid that in a
magazine.
Eric:
When you can flip, that's the problem.
Brian:
That's a premium buy right there.
Ami:
They get on digital; they expect to accomplish something; and so therefore they
are more resentful about things that serve as interference, right? Makes a lot
of sense. But...
Craig:
And it's not passive consumption of a TV show.
Ami:
Right.
Eric:
I think we found different ways to improve online advertising, but we have
never reset the relationship with the audience. That relationship is flawed
from the beginning because it is very much this race to the bottom of trying to
intercept people. We have never regained the faith of the audience.
Announcer:
Thank you for joining us for Digital Marketing Unfiltered. If you enjoyed our
banter, you can access this podcast series on our Web site at www.whitehorse.com,
or send your questions, comments, or content ideas to contactus@whitehorse.com.
Read
Part One of " Facebook Ads: Just as Hated as All Digital Ads.”
Read
Part Two of " Facebook Ads: Just as Hated as All Digital Ads.”
Tags: Media Planning & Buying, Display Advertising, Web Communities, Social Networks
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