All social networks are heavily working on finding ways to earn money through some kind of advertising or marketing.
MySpace, one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) social network is already earning close to billion dollars in revenue.
Now they launched a new self serving ad platform. Ads are served on a CPC basis and you have to design them yourself. However, they’re not text ads, they’re display ads, which you can design yourself on the myspace website
The most interesting feature, however, is the targeting options you have. As Techcrunch writes:
The key to MySpace’s ad platform is their hypertargeting technology. Facebook allows targeting as well, although it’s based on interest areas put in by users directly. So if someone says they like books, you can target ads to them based on that. What MySpace does is much different – they build out a profile of each user based on what they do on MySpace over time, with 1,200 different ways to categorize each user. So if you only want to target women who live in California between the ages of 25-30 who like motorcycles, i can. There are 2,842 of them on MySpace.
If that works properly – and if it is accepted by the community to be targeted in that way, it could well be a huge opportunity for myspace to increase advertising revenues!
At the beginning of the video it says that the agency was asked to create online advertising for Doritos. Sounds like a typical briefing, but the agency instead came up with something completely contradictory: a tool that removes online advertising (and let’s you fill the space with something you like instead).
The idea behind this:
what if the internet was just like a bag of Doritos. Filled only with the stuff you like.
Great idea to achieve awareness on regular media sites without actually pushing ads in your face. Here is the case study video:
75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies are eager to get involved in social-networking initiatives for marketing or customer relations purposes, but 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures
The main problem is (oh wonder) the differing expectations about what will happen during those marketing efforts:
The quirkiest and most addictive campaigns often provide little value for the company and turn out to be fads, whereas marketing efforts on the Web often don’t go over as well with the public.
In addition, the report points out that online usage during the purchasing process of all products and services will increase:
Gartner’s research shows that by 2012 fully half of all purchases will have some online component. That could mean searching for product reviews, reading about a new product on a blog, or comparing prices even if the purchase is ultimately made in a store.
So the need to figure out win-win situations for brands and the community are ever more important.
And furthermore, a „heads up“ for online marketers for the financially difficult times ahead:
Businesses will turn to the Web to stay in touch with consumers during a difficult financial climate. “This is going to be a lifeline,†he said. “Your spirit of customers is probably the only thing you have.â€
I’m working on remake of I Am the Media, so I asked one of our bright and diligent researchers to do a count of the last 4 months of print campaigns on Ads of the World. And the gut feeling was confirmed. 70% of them didn’t contain any URL.
70%? This is absolutely amazing. Out of 256 print ads, only 77 Ads had a URL for more information.
Seems like the other campaigns weren’t really interested in providing further information. But why?
Websites based on fullscreen video seem to be really trendy at the moment! Agent Provocateur now released an interactive fullscreen video experience in which you can choose how you want each scene to continue. There isn’t much story to it, but hey…
Just a quick pointer: Sapient sponsored a survey in the US asking marketers, what they want from their agencies in the future. Here is the top 10 list of things:
A greater knowledge of digital space
More use of “pull interactionsâ€
Leverage virtual communities
Agency executives using the technology they are recommending
Chief Digital Officers make agencies more appealing
Wo ich sonst so bin...