Social Network Advertising

Mark — 2003-09-03T17:01:58-05:00

Let me start by saying that I am not sure whether this is a good idea or a bad one. I've been thinking about it for some time, there are pros and there are cons. Social Network Advertising is advertising that is communicated to you personally by members of your social network, rather than through broadcast or other common advertising outlets. I use the term "social network" loosely here - it doesn't necessarily mean one of the new social networking web sites, it could just be a group of friends communicating via email or other medium. Think of it a different spin on so-called "viral marketing", a self-organizing advertising network.

Here an example of how this might work. A advertiser sends an advertising to a small group of people who have agreed to receive such ads. The recipients of the advertisment would then read the ad and forward it only to friends that they genuinely believe would be interested in the products or services described. Then those friends would forward it to their friends, and so on. A method would be necessary to compensate people for their participation in the network.

Of course, two thoughts immediately come to mind: email chain letters and spam. I get enough spam already, let alone from my friends! But wait a minute, my friends are not evil spammers, are they? If they are really my friends, then they would only send me ads that I might be interested in. Otherwise, it would certainly hurt their reputation. A reputation system would be an inherent part of such a network - whether it be one measured subjectively by members receiving ads or objectively via a ratings-type system (or both). This could drastically improve the response rate of an advertising campaign. If I am willing to put my reputation at stake to send you an advertisment, I'd better be damn sure that you would be interested. The result, theoretically, is that you would only receive ads that are highly targeted to my interests, as judged by people who know me best, whom I trust. Given a choice between mass broadcast spam and social network advertising, I would choose the latter.

It's hard not to think about this idea without thinking about email. But it doesn't have to happen via email. For example, blogs might act as the form of advertising communication. The readers of my blog would be recipients of the advertisment. While I might not know most of them personally, the fact that they have decided to read my blog provides some information about what types of advertising they might be interested in. Once again, posting a social networking ad to my blog would be putting my reputation on the line. If readers feel like they are reading spam, they won't be readers much longer (and they may not have nice things to say/write/blog about me either).

The more I think about this, the more I keep returning to the same question: is this a viable advertising method or just spam from your friends? Perhaps an experiment would be a way to help answer this question.

The inspiration for this line of thinking came from a sentence from The Cluetrain Manifesto, (paraphrasing) every single advertising message that we see is one that we didn't ask to receive.

Social Network Advertising

Abe — 2003-09-03T22:37:33-05:00

few things to point out.

advertising is simply the delivery of information. its only annoying when its info we don't want, or more insidiously information that creates desires we don't want. But if its info we want, say that the next book we plan on buying is on sale for 90% around the corner, then we are all to happy to view the ad.

now our friends are in a position to deliver that sort of info better then most. In fact sometimes they do it for free...

its also important to make a distinction between push and pull. If a friend sends an email about some product I could care less about that's annoying. But if I visit their blog and see that info I could care less, I went to their site after all.

I only want something pushed at me if its close to 100% certain I'll be interested. But in a passive/pull situation I'm far more open to encountering less focused ads.

Social Network Advertising

Dan Brickley — 2003-09-22T08:02:21-05:00

It'd be worrying close to the old pyramid marketing schemes which preceeded and inspired their email spam'd successors. It'll happen though!

ps. Mark, did your foaf file URL get masked when you switched to Movable Type? it 404s, and technorati can't find it...

Social Network Advertising

Mark Carey — 2003-09-22T09:00:58-05:00

Dan, thanks for the heads up on my foaf file. This blog has been on MT from the beginning, but I did switch hosts recently -- and I forgot to upload the FOAF file to the new server. You have given me an idea: I have now set up my FOAF file as an MT "index template" - so next time I move my MT database, a rebuild will recreate the FOAF file automtically.

Social Network Advertising

Henry Brier — 2006-12-13T18:57:49-05:00

We are trying to build a similar advertising system. Without sending emails though. Every group can create own directory and add relevant businesses, products or services to it. Then they can rate and write reviews about the listings. In each category listings with highest ratings appear on the top, so they are more visible. Essentially, customer reviews and ratings speak for themselves, so companies just provide company description, but not the ads. There is also an option to create an ad insert advertising best companies in selected categories and put it on different sites. The idea is that only quality products and services deserve to be advertised. And group members themselves decide what is a quality product and what is not.

Please, check out

http://www.indextar.com/ba,
http://www.indextar.com/smolensk - examples of directories created by two different groups.

http://www.qbain.org describes our ideology.

Social Network Advertising

KRobinson — 2007-03-29T10:57:20-05:00

As an employee for a niche social networking site, I've been struggling with a question for a few days now, and was hoping someone could shed some light on this matter. Each of our users has their own page, which is in and of itself a community. We are advertising on these pages, and looking to expand that revenue stream even further. To do so however, we need to understand how many of our pages are "receptive" to advertising. Simply being active doesn't necessarily imply that the pages are being visited, so my question is this: "Is there a standard amount of inactivity, following which advertisers will no longer consider an individual page available for impressions?" Is it 2 weeks, 2 months, etc. Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Social Network Advertising

Patricia — 2007-07-25T10:37:01-05:00

Please help. Your donations are so appreciated.
Thanks,
Patricia

Social Network Advertising

Patricia — 2007-07-25T10:37:48-05:00

Social Network Advertising

viz — 2008-05-08T18:27:27-05:00

Advertising in social networks simply doesn't work because social networks are not meant for business - they are just for hanging out only