Facebook/Online ads
Regular reader ‘P’ has just Tweeted the five best Facebook advertising campaigns.
As the post points out, none of these have anything to do with Facebook’s regular advertising, by which I mean those messages along the right-hand side of the screen that promise to ‘reduce your belly in three days with this one weird tip’. If my own experience is anything to go by, regular Facebook advertising is of virtually zero interest to any of its users, who happily update their statuses, play Wordscraper and share photos without paying any attention to the ads.
Here we are, a good decade into the era of proper, well-thought-out internet advertising that makes money for a great many supposed experts, and it feels very much like the entirety of the accumulated wisdom has resulted in something which at best is ignored, and at worst is hated.
Take YouTube ads, for example. Have you ever done anything other than click them off, silently cursing the way they invade your precious clip of a breakdancing child? The long ones you can’t switch off are the most annoying. Large companies pay good money to put a 30-second message on a clip (which always feels like it lasts a minute) that either pisses you off or causes you to look at something else until your real clip is ready.
And that’s part of the problem with advertising on the net: you’re never more than a click away from another site you’d rather spend time on to avoid being bored by an ad.
The Ad Contrarian goes into all this in far more detail than I do, but has it really not occurred to any marketers that advertising on the main internet sites is something that can actively damage the perception of their brand? The unfortunate fact for them is that we all started on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube when they were free, so when ads come in we feel that something good that we really liked has been ruined/violated by the introduction of unwanted interruptions. If they were free once, why can’t they continue being free? And as for the brands that want to access all your information in return for the opportunity to watch a clip, well they just seem creepy and aren’t exactly offering very much in return for such riches.
Going back to the top of this post, it’s clear that the only things that really work in these environments are ‘ads’ that offer some kind of reward in the form of entertainment, offers or information. But that’s as it’s always been: we like things that contribute to us. The rest will be ignored, whether they’re on TV, on posters or online.
And since this was the status quo in 2002, I’m just a little surprised that I’m still able to write about it in 2012.
Do internet ads disrupt in the worst way without offering us anything back?
Interesting.
FB shares fell another 8% yesterday. And there’s a class action coming because the NASDAQ systems went down in the first crucial hours of trading. Fun and games. Here’s a good article detailing Morgan Stanley’s bullish approach towards the IPO:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/as-facebooks-stock-struggles-fingers-start-pointing/?src=tp
But here’s the kicker. You’re buying media space. Currently the ‘cost per thousand’ ladder looks a bit like this:
Top of the heap:
Targeted pre-roll ads = circa £20 per ‘000
An ‘average’ tv campaign:
TV spots = circa £6 per ‘000
Bottom rung of the ladder:
Display ads online (banners etc) = £2 per ‘000
So if you’ve got an online business model that is dependent on banners / skyscrapers etc you can expect to charge – and get – £2 per ‘000.
Buried in FB’s prospectus is the fact that they have an eye-wateringly colossal ad inventory. And if you do the sums they are looking to put this huge inventory into the market at 28cents per ‘000.
The base price is £2. FB are going to lower that to 18p.
Flooding the online market with such a mammoth volume of cheap ad space is going to have an extraordinary ripple effect.
If Ben is right – and FB users don’t look at ads, then it looks as if they are going to be served up a whole lot more ads to not look at – simply because the space will be so cheap.
All media is bought and sold as a commodity. It’s price is set by how much the market values it. This is why A/V ads (like TV and Pre rolls) are comparatively costly, because they are the most valuable and powerful media spaces. Online ads, including facebook ads, are cheap because they’re about as useful as a chocolate sock. Facebook dropping the price even further is just tacit admittance that those spaces are pretty much crap.
The saddest thing about all of this is that the great and holy Zuckerdude, chief lord of the geeks, cannot find a better way of making money out of his divine creation than flogging spaces to marketers. So much for a revolution.
Is this not the way 99% of advertising inevitably ends up working though? i.e interrupting.
Who watches TV, reads a magazine or walks sown the high street to see the an ad? You always have the option to change the channel or turn the page, much like you have the option to click off the video.
@4
The difference is though, that we have kind of bought the unspoken deal in print and commercial TV that great content is paid for by the advertising that intersperses it.
Whereas the internet, especially sites like facebook and twitter, is inherently based upon free for all content and use. Ads become much more of an irritant in that context. That may be unfair, but unless you’re going to go around and explain things to every person in the civilised world, it’s just tough titty.
@SOG
Indeed. And the more the market pores over the FB prospectus – and recognises that the figures only add up ‘assuming there is no change in the market over time’ – the more the share price rocks.
The numbers are beguiling though. 70% of the world’s population (outside China) has a FB account. And they are giving the space away. You can see why brands are tempted…..
Be prepared to be called to court as part of the class action Ben:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18180861
I was just reading facebook and i accidentally clicked a shitty link and it took me here??? Black magic.
Saw this and thought of your post – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE0KLVdFwYk
the internet doesn’t need advertising money to exist. advertising doesn’t own it. it’s not a medium in the traditional sense. it’s much more important than that.