Is Anyone Else Bored with Facebook Ads Yet?

For the life of me I am trying to figure out why companies out there are still attempting to advertise in the traditional sense of the word on Facebook. Personally, I can’t say that I have ever bother to look up Jennifer Aniston’s Acai Berry Weight Loss Diet, or stopped what I was doing in order to dress my very own Zwinky Doll. Clearly, the message that these advertisers are trying to send got to me, and I am sure thousands of other fellow facebook friends, however, the point is that I, much like the 99.96% of facebook users**, don’t ever actually click on the link.  According to an online youth survey conducted by Forrester 86% of people use Facebook to see what their friends are up to.  (And about 65% should be considered Facebook creepers (People who look up profiles of people they don’t kno)w…who has time for this?)

But I digress, it should seem pretty clear that no one is on Facebook in order to look at banner ads created by clever advertisers.  Taking into account people are primarily on Facebook to write message and interact with their friends, Facebook has introduced a new way for advertisers to reach a very lucrative young audience by using something called Engagement Ads. Engagement Ads come in three forms: Comment Style Ads (allows users to post their comments, similar to wall posting), Virtual Gifts Ads (people can share virtual items with friends) and Fan Style Ads (joining a fan page for something you are particularly passionate about). Now of the three, I can see the Fan Style Ads working pretty well. I have seen a few of my Facebook friends who have subscribed to this type of advertising, and I must admit that I am often curious about some of the products that have piqued their interest. However, I can’t say that I have ever personally followed up on their fan page. From an advertiser’s perspective, however, I would see this as a great way in which to offer up new updates and information about products to a dedicated audience. Let’s take for example RIM (Research in Motion) and their Blackberry products. While I am not aware if RIM has a fan page, (I would imagine it does) it would make sense to me that when its time to release a new product (say the Blackberry Storm for instance) that said fan page should contain information regarding new product specs and possibly links to a virtual view of the product. Perhaps consider offering free trials to some of the most passionate RIM fans based on comments and interaction with the fan page. Wouldn’t this be the ideal way in which to engage in two way communication with customers? I can see this Engagement Advertising Model working in the long term.

The other “Engagement Advertisement” ideas I am not too sure about. If I wanted to add a comment couldn’t I just do that on the product’s fan page? so why create a separate space just for Facebook user comments? and am I really going to trade around miniature versions of the Blackberry Storm with all my friends? I don’t know maybe I have gotten too old and it doesn’t hold the same appeal for me as it does for others. Maybe it can happen with the right product, but I would still see these two forms of EA getting boring really quick. I suppose that’s the thing with new technologies and in particular Facebook Applications, once you’ve played with them for a while, they become like forgot toys never to be played with again.

**(The stat came from Jeremiah Owyang’s blog for Forrester Research www.web-strategist.com/blog/category/facebook-strategy/)

The Cost of Online Content

I am struggling these days (as I am sure many of you are these days as well) with the cost and effort that goes into producing content for websites. While the path should seem simple enough, find appropriate content that attracts a lot of people who are interested in a certain niche category, convert online traffic into advertising dollars or sell merchandise on the website itself and then Bob’s your uncle. However, those of us who are responsible for keeping online users happy know that people can be fickle and they constantly need to be entertained. When is that point where revenue starts to surpass the cost of content acquisition? and when I talk about content acquisition I mean everything involved in making sure that everything on the site stays relevant and fresh and interesting to online users. These days it seems to take more and more dynamic content in order to keep people interested. Anywhere from online videos to music, to online chats and forums etc. Its like a never ending challenge! and that stuff can start to get expensive!

So I pose this question out to anyone who has managed to figure out the best way of creating content without breaking the bank….how do you do that?

YouTube Finally Gets in the Game

First of all I would like to apologize to all my readers for my month-long hiatus. I have been extremely busy over the last month with new projects and was unable to find time to continue my writing. I am back now and you have my sincerest apologies. 

I wanted to talk today about and an announcement I saw recently about YouTube. It appears that Google has finally found a way to monetize one of the most popular sites on the Internet with a business model that looks strangely familiar. The concept is that users who post videos on the site will have the opportunity to bid on keywords which will be associated with links to their videos that pop up whenever someone searches for a video on YouTube. I don’t know about you, but to me this sounds a lot like Google Adwords. I mean bravo for Google finally finding a way in which to try and attempt to get some type of return on their initial $1.65 billion investment. I am surprised, however, that it took two years in which to implement a strategy that has already been proved successful (and mighty lucrative might I add) with its search engine. Why didn’t they attempt this strategy from the beginning? I would be curious to see how well it works. For Google’s sake I hope it does. Otherwise, they would still have one of the most expensive video hosting sites in the history of the Internet.