Facebook knows a lot about me. It knows where I live, what my activities and interests are, what music and movies I like, and a lot more. So why do I rarely see an ad that is relevant to me in my newsfeed?
Apparently I am not alone. While Dynamic Logic’s AdReaction® 2007 study found that most people were ambivalent to the idea of advertising on social network sites, a recent survey by Prospectiv found that nearly 9 in 10 social network users found few (or none) of the ads they saw to be interesting or relevant.
So far, the most relevant ad I have seen is the one for Facebook ads. After all, I do need to spend my Visa Network gift of $100 worth of free Facebook advertising before October.
But I doubt that Facebook knew that. I suspect that Facebook is advertising its own ads for the same reason that most of the ads served on Facebokare not relevant: there are just not enough advertisers to go around. With over 100 million monthly active users, you need a heck of a lot of different advertisers to cover all the relevant bases.
The trouble is that I am not sure that push targeting will ever be effective on social networks. Let me try to explain why.
Facebook promises that you can target ads by “age, gender, location, interests, and more.” (Click here to read about their ad targeting.) It is the “and more” aspect that intrigues me. Can they target based on the apps you have loaded to your profile page? (If you know, please tell me.)
If they can, that might explain the following ads that have shown up recently:
- Host an Exchange Student - because TravelBrain suggests I travel a lot?
- Get a free Obama button - because Political Compass suggests I might be a Democrat?
- Create your own cult wine - because Wine Beagles (must have a look at that again) suggests I love wine?
Might this mean that they can target ads based on my status update as well?
If that’s the case, I should never have mentioned writing a POV on social media. Now I am getting ads featuring supposed “experts” on the topic, like the one for the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer where Gary (winelibrarytv.com) Vaynerchuk will tell me how to use social media to build my brand.
The weird thing is that this ad ought to be “relevant” to me, but it isn’t. Why?
- Because I am on Facebook to connect with my friends – not to learn about how to use social media to build my brand. The message might be relevant but the context is wrong.
- Because my objective is to share stuff (photos, news, or even a silly game) with my friends, not to think about work. The message may be relevant but my mindset is wrong.
- Because having spent hours researching people’s opinions on the topic, I have already published my POV (click here to read it). Sorry MarketingProfs, the message might be relevant but the timing is wrong.
And that is the problem with pushing ads at people. It is so difficult when you need to get the message, timing, place and consumer mindset right. And in an interactive environment, getting it wrong is asking for far more trouble that showing a boring or irrelevant ad on TV. For a different take on the same idea check out this post.
So if push targeting is unlikely to ever become the Holy Grail of advertising on social networks, maybe we should be looking at the idea proposed by Alex Johnson in response to this post.
Alex said, “I wonder whether the idea of people actively choosing what kind of adverts they are interested in (as opposed to our inferring it from their behaviour) would change their attitude to advertising they see - i.e. perhaps they would take a much greater interest in it.”
Now that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. What do you think?
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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August 19th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Hi Nigel, interesting post
Firstly, living in the UK I’m not so sure, but does Hulu insist on one choosing the adverts witnessed?
I agree that the ads on Facebook aren’t relevant. One of the issues for me is that the brands most likely to experiment with new media are direct response. If I am on a social network, I am not in a mindset to make a purchase.
However, once better metrics come along, branding messages may soon appear. In my subconscious - but not necessarily in a rational questionnaire - I believe I would appreciate this more.
I suppose one could also make a natural selection argument. Opportunities to advertise on Facebook are limited to news feed items and small banners. Not the most adaptable of formats for a major player to play with, and so we get the sub-prime advertisers moving in on a lower CPM…
Best
Simon
August 20th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I think that sounds like a great idea. Knowing that we must view ads, why not view those that might simplify the buying process for ourselves and save the advertiser wasted marketing dollars?
This might actually be a good idea for all media, including television. It would be great to not see the same irrelevant ads every commercial break, and instead see an ad for something I actually need.
Sounds like this would be a win-win situation.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:16 am
Hi Simon and Krista, thanks for the comments.
Simon, sorry, I have no idea how Hulu works! I should do so it will be some useful homework for me…unless anyone reading the blog can tell us?
You may well be right that most players are of the direct response mindset. It would certainly explain many of the ads I have seen. To the point about the ad format, I have always seen these as having the potential to direct people to much more relevant and useful content on Facebook. In that role all they have to do is catch people’s eye and ensure they understand the relevance of what is on offer elsewhere.
Krista, would you only accept advertising from brands you already knew? Wouldn’t life get a bit boring?
Cheers, Nigel
August 20th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I think I’m envisioning more of an opt in where I can choose what product categories interest me and receive communication from the advertisers in the pool with a related offering. I guess this essentially mimicks the ad targeting tool that Facebook offers, but might build a bit more rapport with consumers.
Personally, I rarely find ads in my news feed or along the banner relevant (except for one about a floating beer pong table, isn’t that genius?)
Anyhow, is anyone familiar with how the voting function works for both news feed and banner ads on the site? There is a thumb’s up and thumb’s down image next to every advert, and the user can vote on whether they like or dislike the ad. In addition, it provides a drop down box where the user can choose the reason for their vote. I would assume this is to improve targeting, but I have yet to see my ads become more relevant since I’ve started voting.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:31 am
I’ve just had a play with the thumbs up/thumbs down on Facebook. Very neat. This seems like a compromise solution -I assume they are hoping this is enough empowerment to stimulate engagement but not so much as to restrict targeting.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Nigel’s offline idea (if I have understood it correctly) whereby more discerning eyeballs cost more to reach could turn out to be prescient if this environment remains as tricky for advertisiers. Since paying not to receive adverts is a recognised model, there is clearly scope for the consumer to make more granular decisions about relevance and cost. They might attach a certain value to receiving ads outside their chosen interest areas and another to receiving ads relating to their hobbies. Whether this value would be negative or positive (i.e. whether advertisers are paying them or they are paying advertisers) would presumably depend on the value being derived from the site and how the market develops.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:14 am
Hi Folks,
You know, I have looked at the thumbs on these ads several times and then forgotten to check them out as I got distracted by other stuff on the page. Thanks for making to go back and look more closely. I agree they are an interesting way for people to give feedback but I wonder how many do?
Cheers, Nigel
August 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am
I’d never noticed the thumbs before, but now you’ve highlighted them I’m impressed with the functionality.
There seem to be:
- 4 sub-categories to the thumbs up (interesting, relevant to me, good offer, other)
- 7 sub-categories to the thumbs down (misleading, offensive, pornographic, uninteresting, irrelevant, repetitive, other).
I can imagine this will be useful data for both Facebook and their advertisers.
I guess the major issue is whether enough respondents will reply to make the data representative and actionable. Unless consumers quickly see that the ratings they provide improve the quality & relevance of ads shown to them, I can’t imagine that too many consumers will continue to spend their time providing these ratings.
August 21st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Thanks Duncan, have you seen the rating system on this blog? Most people seem to miss that too!
More seriously I note that Facebook may be making use of our newsfeeds in future:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/08/your-facebook-n.html
August 21st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I agree with Alex Johnson and Nigel - instead of relying solely on push targeting to serve ads to consumers on social networking sites - or any web property, for that matter - marketers also need to take the extra step and simply ask consumers directly about their interests and preferences and the type of ads they’d like to see. Prospectiv’s poll of nearly 800 users of social networking sites found that although the majority surveyed felt the ads they currently see don’t speak to them, 56% polled said the quality of their online experience would be improved if social networking sites provided more targeted advertisements and offers tailored to their specific interests and preferences. The answer is simple - marketers just have ask. http://www.prospectiv.com/news163.jsp
August 26th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Using social networks as a medium for communication is indeed tricky. I would like to bring a perspective from India. In India, we have low internet penetration in households. However, internet usage amongst specific sections of the population (youth) is high and so is the popularity of social networks. Two of the predominant social networking sites are Orkut and LinkedIn. Of course there are other players like Facebook, Gazzag, Hi5, Yaari etc. On teh one hand, while Orkut is more of a network for connecting with friends, LinkedIn presents a more professional approach to social networking. Also, LinkedIn is accessed by many HR executives and consultants.
If one were to do an attitudinal survey in India, one would find that the following are the predominant reasons for usage of social networking websites
LinkedIn: Staying in touch with my business colleagues (professional connection), Exploring career opportunities, To keep myself updated on what my ex-boss is doing these days
Orkut: More of a time pass (joining specific fan clubs and interacting with others), followed by staying in touch with friends
In both the cases, the person is not accessing social networks to shop for things. The person is not interested in information. If he does get those pop up ads, it is only going to irritate him further.
In my opinion, probably one of the best ways to use social networking as a medium is to make use of specific brand fan clubs. E.g. a fan club for a health food drink could be used to spread more information about the brand. However, one has to be careful that the way it is done is not perceived as imposing.
Other than that, it’s predominantly word of mouth that would work in a social networking webiste
August 26th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Hi Jere, glad to hear from someone else who still believes in asking questions.
Ravi, thanks for the comment. It is good to hear about people’s experience outside of the US and Europe. Your contribution highlights another issue when it comes to using social networks to communicate with people…there are so many of them! The logistics of working across multiple sites are daunting.
Cheers, Nigel
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 am
As someone who runs a small business and has used facebook ads to target customers, I can vouch for the fact that, so far, they are pretty ineffective.
Facebook advertise their ads as ‘find your customers before they start searching’ - a nice thought, but, to my mind, a misunderstanding of frame of mind advertsing. When you compare it to Adwords, the volume of traffic and the effectiveness of conversion is hardly worth the time. In search, people are actively engaged in a discovery process (whether researching or buying).
It may have changed since we stopped FB ads a couple of months ago, but at the time you couldn’t target on very much - certainly not apps and status statements. They offered age/gender/marital status/region. You could also search their hobbies/books/films etc.
We wanted to taget new/prospective mums (for our baby products). The closest we could get was to go for “females, married, in a certain age range.”
As others have pointed out - on facebook you’re generally not in the frame of mind to be in the buying process (whereas in search you clearly are). FB ads seem ideal for a very local business (especially ones you might not go looking for on google) or potentially by bigger brands who want to use the fact that there’s image and text - or who want to tap into the social networking opportunty. Have a look for the Lush product page on FB - they’ve used the ads to get a discussion going around favourite products/where to open new shops etc.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I think there are a wide number of reason why you (and others) should feel the ads are irrelevant
1. are they any good - is there any entertainment/educational value
or are they simply price points on parade
2. are we seeing these ads? - most people have become blind to banner ads
why should we think push based ads of any sort across any medium is any different. unless it has intrinsic entertainment/educational value
3. does relevance percolate to the surface more readily when its self initiated
and so despite its drawbacks - will the google/search based advertising model ultimately prevail because of its inherent advantage at being able to offer up a compelling (convenient?) solution set at the right time and place.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:34 am
Hi Miro, the scary thing is that we all know the power of convenience. Offer the regular consumer something which is advertised as more convenient and they will buy it. Marketers are no different. So I think we can expect to see more ads like this wherever we are online.
Amusingly, I saw an ad for kayaking on Facebook the other day…maybe they are getting their act together after all.
Nigel