More on advertising on social networks via widgets

von | Aug 7, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Online Advertising, SEO / SEA, Social Media Marketing

Some more ramblings on advertising on social networks, as I have written about it lately already: Sean Carton also thinks that advertising on social networks won’t work properly using regular ads. His point of why widgets might be the better solution (and I agree):

This is why widgets have been getting so much play lately: they don’t intrude on the user experience. Yeah, they’re branded. Yeah, they’re obviously a product of crass commercialism, but when done well they enhance rather than detract from the experience. They can become part of the conversation you’re having with friends and acquaintances, not an interruption of that conversation. Are widgets the answer to how advertising can work in social networking?

Not at all, but they’re a beginning. The answer will become apparent when we think outside of the ol‘ display advertising box and start to imagine ways we can work with the essential nature of social networking, rather than against it.

How can we join communities of interest in an authentically helpful way? How can we give consumers the tools to facilitate their conversations about our products or services (conversations they’re going to have anyway, with our without our help)? How can we help connect them to get help, advice, or suggestions from others (Dave Evans has a few good ideas)? How can we make it easier for true believers and brand fans to do the selling for us (or help recruit new fans)? How can we work with what’s going on rather than against it?

The question is, whether this is really a solution for all advertisers. Also, these considerations, same as the debate about the effectiveness of contextual ads only focus on the click rate as the only measure of success. I know, I know, we’re in the interactive space, so why go back to the old ad measurement models?

But then again, an eyeball is an eyeball and nobody can deny the value of attention of these eyeballs. Even if the click rate suggests failure, the message might have stuck. Don’t you think? Otherwise you would reduce the awareness and brand building capabilities of the online space to a story of how many people clicked, not how many people saw and remembered the message. That can’t be right, can it?*

But, going back to Seans point: yes, let’s rather entice the consumers with something of value. Something that provides this value at a point in time and (web-)space, where the consumer will most likely associate the best positive times with your brand because of your contribution to their needs and preferences. If it can be done best on social networks providing widgets (at least for now), then think of a good idea and go do it!

(*I am not oblivious at all to the fact, that interaction with the ads (i.e. clicking and interacting with the subsequent pages) will reinforce the message, make the whole awareness campaign x-times more successful!)

Where did you loose 50% of your ad budget?

von | Nov 11, 2006 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Digital News, Online Advertising

Marketing.fm wants to revise a famous quote by John Wanamaker:

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. -John Wanamaker, US department store merchant (1838 – 1922)

I know the quote, of course, as I suppose everyone in advertising does. But I didn’t know it was of someone as unknown as this chap. On the contrary, I was almost tempted to assign the quote to Mark Twain, purely because lately if feels like most thoughtful quotes come from Mark Twain, as if he is some sort of a quote-goat anytime people don’t know the real source.

In the same blog post, they write:

The advent of interactive media and online measurement has allowed marketers to target advertising messages much more precisely. Morover, it is possible to access comprehensive data on the viewers of your campagin: page views, geographic location, clicks, links, etc.
Is it time that we revised the 50/50 Wanamaker quote? Should it be more like 70/30 now?

I ain’t sure that the hard measurements that the web provides, should redefine investments alone. This might sound strange coming from someone working in digital marketing. But if you think about it: applying these measurements, you de-value the web to a purely interactional medium (which it is, most of the time, admittingly). However, by that you omitt all the effects of the contacts people have with your brand that cannot be exactly measured:

  • The impression an ad made with that one page view, even if the user didn’t click on it.
  • time spent interacting with the ad piece all together
  • triggered purchase consideration, fulfilled in brick&mortar store

Online Advertising can be measured and therefore it should be. Always.
But we should not forget, that there are so called key performance indicators that can help us understand the effect of advertising, and that can’t be measured by interaction, but purely by qualitative research. Asking the target audience about their perception of the brand, the channel interaction, etc.
Classical Advertising has been working with this kind of research all the time. And while it never helped to solve the puzzle of where the 50% of investments „got lost“, I think, purely relying on data measured through interaction, will not help either. It sounds more like a quick fix of Marketeers trying to answer tough questions by providing hard results – irrespectively of context.