| Which their ad platform is mostly OK at doing. This is about using the social channels as a business like an ordinary user. Which is overall not a good move to make. >Once you truly know the audience, it opens up whole new opportunities for marketing (subtle product placement, indirect promotion via influencers etc) - which almost nobody is doing effectively right now. 'Subtle' is actually illegal, but that doesn't stop a whole lot of people... these kinds of arrangements will deplete the trust of social channels, which I don't care about, because I expect it to happen, but some of you people might. >What we see instead is the same tired web banner concept, clumsily applied to FB or Twitter, and we're getting inundated by ads (that annoying DOMO 'are you still using Excel for your data?' ad comes to mind) - no wonder they are not seeing any ROI. Domo probably sees ROI, even though I agree their product is dumb. Most banners are mediocre formats because of the way that the human eye tracks the page. These are increasingly being replaced by in-stream or semi randomized formats that mimic print tradition more than banner methods. The in-stream formats used by the social networks are not like banners because a( they're randomized
b( they're within the typical user's eye-path Those two points go after the banner blindness issue. I think the bigger problem is that social networking is a fad that may not be capable of really supporting advertising, just because of the value that users expect from using them. For the same reasons we hate unsolicited marketing that comes in by phone, many people dislike advertising that comes in by social networking. Girls clip out the ads in Seventeen magazine to save for later. Almost none of them save-as the ads they see on social networks. I would not care, as an advertiser, if all the social networks popped out of existence tomorrow and banned advertising. I would adapt. It really doesn't matter to me whether these companies live or die. |