Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Facebook Launches New Ad Product, Still Lags Behind MySpace

The Wall Street Journal: Facebook may have passed MySpace in terms of worldwide audience, but the social networking giant has struggled to sell ads as effectively as its competitor. Today, the Palo Alto company is unveiling its latest ad format, called "engagement ads" which prompt a user to do something within the ad unit, such as post a comment about a product or RSVP to watch a TV show. Once a user engages with an ad, a message would then be sent through the news feed to his or her friends list.

As the Journal points out, Facebook has a lot to prove with the new format, which is being made available to all of its advertisers after four months of testing. According to comScore, Facebook's share of U.S. online display spending was just 1.1% in June. By comparison, News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit, which includes MySpace, was the market leader in display spending with 15.9%.

Some marketers think spending on social networking sites is a waste of money. "I haven't heard of anyone purchasing something off an ad on Facebook," says Angie Tulgetske, vice president of Re/Max Preferred Choice Properties, which resells timeshares. "I wouldn't think any of my marketing dollars would be spent advantageously there." Re/Max spends thousands of dollars a month on search ads but avoids social-networking sites because results show that users are less likely to notice ads on social networking sites than at other content destinations.

Facebook is a dead dog
I've been getting a lot of traffic on my blog via the search term "Facebook Refusenicks" aka, that anti facebook movement. Says a lot. Says people don't need that type of contact with their friend lists.
And word of mouth is one thing, but letting a friend know you've watched an ad or two is weird. This isn't a virtual water cooler. It's a place where the winner activities entail photo perving and the event crashing via rsvp.
Apps have died (or die within a month of launch), relationship status should always be a no go zone and everything else just seems to fall into a peripheral.
There is something weird going on with the Facebook. MySpace has kind of found it's place, but now that people have realised Facebook is an over exposed profile requiring constant update, people don't want to commit. I think in the next few months we will begin to find a shift in social network behaviour.

There's something wrong with this kid's Australian accent.

1 comment:

Poly Wanna Answer? said...

Think you've got it wrong re: Facebook. It's a more intellectual and less flashy site than MySpace, and the most striking difference is the 'bling factor' MySpace allows and Facebook avoids. MySpace has a huge following largely because of their established music hosting - every band has a MySpace page because it's more suited to MySpace's multimedia capacity. For those of us who just want to network, play games, host and link photos, and stay connected and up-to-date with our friends, Facebook is the way to go. (Sure, there are other sites out there; ASmallWorld is gaining popularity, LinkedIn has its uses as a professional networking site, and pretty much every multiparty portal from Evite to Classmates.com is trying to carve out a part of the pie. But I haven't logged into my MySpace account more than once over the past 3 months, and it's the only thing that I feel comes close to the Facebook experience. Don't even get me started on Friendster.)