FacebookLayouts

Today, more than ever, stories are being published regarding the nature of advertisements on Facebook.

In a search to gather information on how Facebook users feel about the advertisements that are displayed, one notices the indifference that surrounds the web in regards to this hot topic. There are serious success stories that Facebook shares on their Advertising page, but just as equally, there have been some not-so-successful stories plaguing around the web. For this reason, Facebook has started to incorporate a new advertising platform that provides for more targeting for their advertisement providers. The platform centers on one thing, relevancy.

The 11 Targeting Factors for Advertisers:

1. Location
2. Age
3. Birthday
4. Sex
5. Keywords
6. Education
7. Workplaces
8. Relationships
9. Interested In
10. Languages
11. Connections 

As a test, we decided to experiment with each of these factors in order to measure results. We filled in our information as follows:

• location – San Diego, CA.
• Age, 22.
• Sex – female.  
• Education – none (blank)
• Workplace – none (blank)

Leaving education and workplace blank resulted in ads like, “Get your degree online”, “Work from home”, “The Art Institute”, etc. After filling in those two fields, those ads disappeared. Gone. Relationship: In a relationship This effectively removed the dating ads. For interests, we filled out blogging, writing, and reading, therefore Facebook sent me ads for developing websites, and interestingly enough, workout ads. As indicated by this experiment, one can see that Facebook is beginning to establish excellent advertising principles. And one thing’s for sure:

Relevance is key.

Here’s a sample of irrelevance: this where the man was married and he was getting ads for singles 30+. Or the one shown to the right.

During research of learning about the user experience of advertising on Facebook, one may find a wealth of examples pertaining to the picture above.  However, the overall consensus was that people were “ad blind” to some extent. The only thing that caught their eye was elements that were immediately relevant to them or caught their attention otherwise. There was no difference in the amount of people who were accepting of the ads on their profile page versus the ads that are shown on application pages. The one comment heard over and over again about the ads on the application page centered on their annoyance. Simply, application page ads are annoying and never lucrative. As a counter to this, applications must gravitate to ad optimization practices that provide relevant advertisements to users.

This innovative eye tracking study proved that readers who surf the internet are ignorant of advertisements placed on webpage’s because of irrelevance, vanilla design, or familiarization with the webpage’s layout. However, through Facebook’s advertising campaign, the idea is for them to be able to extract data that we put on our own profiles and give that to advertising networks so that they can target us correctly. Again, there is the duality of this phenomenon because wouldn’t one rather be targeted by relevant ads? But in the same breath, one should be able to search around a website without having to worry about seeing even one advertisement. But it is what it is and these networks are making ridiculous amounts of money from the impressions we are given every day.

Athousandthingsunseen.com, claims that Facebook is projected to make $500 million this year from their advertisements alone. The goal is for them to be the largest Lead Generation Ad Network on the web. Ads for foodservice have proven to be very successful, it is only a matter of time until we start seeing them for other companies. I am sure we will start to see credit cards, mortgages, and local service professionals all over our Facebook pages in a matter of days. Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, says that “the goal is to get to the very bottom of the advertising funnel and find Facebook users who are about to make a purchase”. The Business Insider, discusses the importance of relationship marketing through the social media realm. With Facebook’s “fan pages”, any company can create a fan page and build rapport with their clients through constant updates, repeated “fans”, and free giveaways. For example, If you become a fan of Papa John’s on Facebook, they are offering a free medium cheese pizza, just for becoming a fan! The very core of Facebook marketing is to build lasting customers, not one time purchases. The ads that do the best are the ones that have the link directly on it to “Become a fan”. With Facebook’s viral “Suggestions” tab, the ability to “Become a fan” of the same things your friends are fans of allows the word to spread fast; therefore these companies are instantly monetizing on something as simple as creating a fan page.  

At this point, one thing is clear: the advertisements that actually target you and products you want are not so bad. But what about those lame quizzes or addictive games like Farmville? These are other avenues that ad agencies are using to develop revenue in a roundabout way. For example, Zynga (the company who started Farmville) doesn’t charge users to play Farmville, but they do sell digital crops, cattle, and farmland. Or if you don’t want to buy these, you can click on one of their ads and get $450 in “Farm Cash”. The ad takes you to a link for a “free learning CD” which if you don’t cancel it in time, you will be charged for. The typical scam consists of a situation such as this: you take one of those lame quizzes looking for the answer of which one of your Facebook friends stalk your page the most and then it says they will text you the answer, once you reply to the text you have just entered into a $10/month subscription. These scandalous ways of creating a profit are inexcusable, but if it is an advertisement for a product we actually want, it is more reasonable. Therefore, as we move into 2010, one can only conclude that advertising networks should work harder on quality and relevance of the advertisements that they are producing.

What are some other ways that advertisers can create more relevant ads?

Let’s hear your ideas.