Facebook’s Super Ad Technology / 04.03.08
Facebook is a wonderful platform, let me get that out the way. It is a great place to find people, interact with others and in general communicate. That is what makes it so special. It has a clean layout that is easy on the eyes and the ads are so out of the way and irrelevant that you sometimes have to wonder why they are even there.
And therein lies the problem. The ads are pointless. Call them whatever you want (Social Ads I believe is the current term), but they are nothing more than ads and we as users know about them. We know they are going to be on the left side when all the action for our profiles is on the right. We can ignore them or if we decide to actually read them we forget about them in two seconds because we just saw Bill updated his status.
But what about targeting? Ah yes, this is where Facebook as an ad platform was really supposed to shine. They have all this information gathered about you so they can target ads better than any platform on the web. Here is a great example.
If Facebook really knew about me they would know that the best this ad can do is make me laugh. There is even a section on my profile that says “Interested In: Women” and yet they serve me the gay man ads. It is quite possible that the Facebook ad robot has seen my face and is not trying to advertise the gay men to me, but to advertise me to the gay men. Now that is quite a bit of technology. Advertising me to the advertisers without them realizing it. Brilliant.
This is exactly what confuses me about our industry. We jump on board to what is hot and say how X company can make Y money simply by doing Z without thinking about the way humans work. We don’t like ads. If you are going to do ads they need to be done right and very few people do them right. Just because you are targetting an ad towards me doesn’t mean I want to see it or will pay attention to it.
Find hot chicks in Tampa? You don’t think I haven’t Googled for that before? No I need social ads that talk to me and understand what I really want. I need social ads that understand I just don’t have the money at the moment to buy what they want me to buy. I need social ads to tell me that I’m missing a great soccer game on Fox Soccer Channel right now and I should get off Facebook to check it out.
I don’t need social ads to tell me that gay men might be attracted to me. I don’t need social ads to tell me I can find hot chicks online that will take my money. I don’t need social ads to tell me that if I click this button I can purchase my own social ad.
Let us not forget that all social networks come and go and eventually it will be Facebook’s time to pass. Sure they have the numbers, but without the money they are nothing more than just the hot thing on the corner. They are free, they cater to college kids who don’t spend money and who love to ignore ads. Definitely a market I’m looking to get into.
One Response
3by9 » Kleiner Goes For The Same Old Same Old // May 27th, 2008
[...] creating a hyperlocal product or directory is almost as cliché as starting your own ad network. Everybody and their brother is in the space, and it’s crowded like Free Beer Night™ at [...]