Whether we like it or not advertising is what keeps the Internet moving. Regardless of what the Web 2.0 pontificators and social media mavens would like everyone to believe not everything on the web is about being free. However this isn’t the same fertile landscape that advertisers may have thought it was. It is also one of the most morally conflicted spaces that advertisers can think of throwing their money into.
While social media is being bandied about as what the future of the web will be all about advertisers need to realize that this isn’t going to be their golden goose. Trying to figure out why doesn’t take any rocket science either regardless of what all these newly minted social media experts would like to whisper in your ear.
They tell you it’s all about engagement and conversations like they are the new mantras chanted at some new age marketers secret weekend retreat. The huge user numbers of sites like YouTube and Facebook are dangled in front of marketing departments of places like Proctor & Gamble like virgin sacrifices. The problem is that these virgin territories might as well have taken permanent vows of chastity for all they are going to help advertisers.
Sure the social media experts like to suggest that because this is all new virgin territory advertisers can’t use the same old tactics – because we’re supposedly smarter now. They point to things like Facebook Pages where advertisers can become involved with their marks customers fans. Well as P. & G. found out this might not be working out so well regardless of the brave face their marketing hacks put on
As for P.& G, the company permits Facebook to talk about the results of only a single P.& G. promotion, presumably its most successful to date: for Crest Whitestrips. The promotion began in fall 2006, when P.& G. invited Facebook members in 20 college campus networks to become Crest Whitestrips “fans” on the product’s Facebook Page. Facebook said it was a great success, attracting 14,000 fans.
Wait a sec … 14,000 people out of the 130 million active members on Facebook and they call this a success? They would have better results by sending some intern down to WalMart on a Saturday and have them hand out coupons.
But hey this is the age of social advertising and the hacks behind the idea know that companies can’t afford to miss any fresh meat. So the pump and dump is on with gullible companies lining up to spill their advertising dollars at the meat market of social media. Only there is a really big problem with this – no-one gives a shit about ads anymore.
Mark Evans in a post today asks the question
So, what’s happening? Why have social networks failed as advertising vehicles?
The answer to this is actually pretty simple – social media advertising has failed because it can’t even get out of the starting gate. The reasons for this are a little more complex and one has to look at the whole philosophy of what is social media – and the people who use it.
Social media is built around idyllic concepts like openness, transparency and that content should be free. That is - free as in beer - where startups blossom with no business plans to make money beyond venture capital and – get ready – yes .. advertising. Google AdSense rules the day in social media startup land. This way half-assed products can come to market bearing tags of beta and we get to use them for free.
You see free is the big byword for social media. It is the banner that is waved in front of everyone as the new future of the web. As a result it has provided a fertile ground for all these new social media marketing clowns experts to convince advertisers that they have a willing flock to make their millions off of.
Except this isn’t the case.
One only has to look at who is using this new world of social media to see why. By and large the current userbase of social media is what is generally referred to as the early adopter and the first wave. By first wave I mean those people who aren’t quite early adopters but they are the larger group of people who follow closely after the early adopter crowd. They; and the early adopters, are also the ones who wear their ad blindness like a badge of honor; and behave like a swarm of pissed off wasps at the mere mention of advertising.
Think not?
Just look at the comments made on a post by Nick Bradbury the other day about how FeedDemon was testing ads in the user interface; which I wrote about earlier, to see this swarm mentality. Another prime example of this is when Google released their Chrome browser. What was the number one complaint against the browser?
It didn’t support plugins so people couldn’t use their favourite ad blocking plugins.
The danger here is that as good as the idea of social media is; and I do believe in it, there is a real danger that it could collapse in on itself. Without any real viable way for people other than those at the top of the social media food chain to make a living in this new world it could become nothing more than a cesspool of inbreeding. If only the people at the top are the ones making the money the real momentum that comes by mass acceptance will never happen.
Social media in all its goodness will only survive if people like you and me can contribute but know that we can pay our bills at the same time. Many of the people dipping their feet into social media for the first time don’t have the same access to revenue streams that those already established in social media do. For them advertising revenue; even if it is only pennies in the beginning, is validation for what they are trying to contribute.
From the users of social media point of view they have to stop being so greedy with their attention span. They have to realize that even on the web things have a monetary cost. Just because they would like to believe that everything is free the reality is that nothing in the long run is free. If the cost is something as minor as looking at an ad in order that someone can feel that what they have to say or do has value then what the fuck is your problem.
As far as the advertisers are concerned – smarten up. Listen to why people hate your ads. Get the hint that people don’t like to see flash images all the time. Understand that people wanna puke every time some ad floats across the page they are trying to read. Advertising is about letting us know about goods and services – not pissing us off to the point we start going ad blind.
The way it stands right now though advertising in the world of social media is generally a failure. Some 14,000 people joining a silly ass page on Facebook is not a
success – no matter how you want to slice it. I don’t profess to know what the answer is but a real starting point point would be people not being such assholes over seeing ads and it would be advertisers getting the idea that we aren’t idiots with open wallets.
Similar Posts:
- Me? … I’m a cranky social media un-expert
- Social Media has its place, just not everywhere
- Social Media vs. social media – there is a difference
- If you think The Web can survive without advertising you’re nuts
- Social Advertising – has Mashable figured out what has eluded Facebook?
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