Entries Tagged 'Facebook Advertising' ↓

You know when the press-announcements were made, it all started like a fairy tale. Everything looked so set be it the Social Ads or be it Facebook Beacon. Barely, a month later problems have started creeping in. Zuckerberg is facing allegations and Beacon is being heavily criticized for its opt-in feature. 

NYT’s Louise Story has accused Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for lying about Beacon’s "opt-in."

Via New York Times Blog -:

I asked why he thought lots of users would want to have information about their purchases sent to their Facebook friends through the company’s new system called Beacon.

I was surprised then when I saw the first version of Beacon, because it automatically sent your friends information on your purchases on participating sites, unless you acted to prevent it. It was an opt-out program. (Yesterday, Facebook reversed that policy.)

I’m hardly the only one who found a gap between what Facebook said and what it did. And this may be costing it some of the blue-chip support that it had amassed. Coca-Cola, for example, has decided not to use Beacon for now…This morning [the Coke source] said: “I, like you, certainly understood that it would be opt-in. That’s what I heard before as well as what I heard on the 6th.”

Time for Facebook to look in the mirror and realize that it’s not a quirky little start-up anymore.

When Beacon was announced it was being looked upon as revelation in social media space. Todd Defren has tried to look at the whole issue from a PR perspective. I second his opinion, but the fact is what can we do curb this problem.

Some stories that make you think. Here’s is this guy ‘Will’ who had bought ring for his girlfriend  an engagement ring at Overstock.com, and this is what happened after that:

‘Imagine my horror when I learned that Overstock had published the details of my purchase (including a link to the item and its price) on my public Facebook newsfeed, as well as notifications to all of my friends. ALL OF MY FRIENDS, including my girlfriend, and all of her friends, etc…
ALL OF THIS WAS WITHOUT MY CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE.’

Todd Defren says ‘But hijacking a person’s privacy in order to sound informed when entering or starting a conversation is wrong.’

Exactly, Todd that’s correct but a chunk of Facebook’s new philosophy is centered around this what can blogosphere do?

Facebook is hitting the world with fire at a rapid rate. Israel’s members on the Facebook network have risen by 100% during the last one month or so. According to news reports, the numbers have bettered by 100 percent since mid-October, from 74,000 to 152,000.

Essentially, the members comprise the quality target audience between the ages of 25 and 40 who are “early adapters,” or among the first users of new technologies. The upsurge in the site members has also lured the Israeli advertisers to publicize on the popular site. 

Ark Interactive’s CEO, Tamir Gordon, said  that their clients expressed interest in joining Facebook after hearing about it from their friends. He also talked about the cheap costs associated with advertising on Facebook which is roughly NIS 15,000-20,000, approximately ten times less than the cost of doing so via Walla, the Israeli Internet portal. 

Till last week, a company could advertise on Facebook only through banner ads, but this changed when Facebook launched a new advertising system that enables organizations to introduce ads into the user pages of its 50 million members, and launch dedicated pages on the site for their brands. 

The official announcement from Facebook is here. The speculations (which we’re correct to a larger extent) are over. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has introduced Facebook Ads, an ad system for organizations which enables them to connect with select set of audiences.

According to the announcement made by Zuckerberg, “Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online”. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do”.

Facebook Ads includes three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with its audience; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about. On other websites, Facebook Beacon provides a way for users to choose to share their activities with their friends on Facebook. Landmark partners are implementing the fullest set of offerings from Facebook Ads.

Effectively speaking the three parts of Facebook Ads are: An opportunity for businesses to connect with their target audience. A high profile ad system that spreads messages virally courtesy Facebook Social Ads. Social Ads appear either inside a user’s News Feed or in the ad space towards the left. An interface for gathering statistics/data on what people are doing on Facebook. Facebook Insights is a free service for all Facebook Pages and Social Ads.

More thoughts by Zuckerberg on the Launch

“The first thing businesses can do is design a page to craft the exact experience they want people to see”.

“Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people”. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broad-casted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system”.

Facebook’s New Ad Network to Be Released at Ad:Tech NY

In case you have not already heard, Facebook is set to announce the launch of their new ad network tomorrow at Ad:Tech NY. Few details are available about the new ad network, but rumors are swirling that the ad network will not just be internal to Facebook. It has been speculated that the ad network will look to sell space on third party websites and will leverage to Facebook user demographic data to increase the targeting on ads displayed to users.

While this announcement is sure to get a tremendous amount of buzz, I have not been impressed with Facebook’s current advertising solutions and I am skeptical of the network even competing with the likes of Google or Yahoo. Take Facebook Flyers Pro for example. The ad types are limited, ugly and get horrible click through rates. Does this sound like a marketers dream?

At best, I think the facebook ad network will be the defacto way to monetize Facebook applications, but in terms of being a viable monetization stream for third party websites, I do not think it will be a success.

(Image Credits: Facebook Observer)

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