Facebook Ads And Beacon Revealed
After much bantering and a Apple-esque build-up, Facebook finally unveiled it's shiny new toys, Social Ads and Beacon. According to the official press releases from Facebook, the new ad serving technologies will revolutionize internet advertising by allowing consumers to advertise for companies (and not get paid for it)!
There has been a lot of talk around them there inter-webs about this announcement. Some people are worried about privacy concerns, while others are welcoming the changes as a step forward. Those citing privacy concerns are concerned about the data collection that will be afforded to companies through the programs, as they can now target ads to you based on everything you list in your profile (favorite bands, TV shows, comments on Your Wall, etc.) The team that is embracing the new ad platforms are saying that targeted ads will be beneficial in the long run for both the customer and the business.
As a consumer and marketer, I think the idea is genious. Target marketing has always been effective, but this goes beyond the boundaries of "key-word" marketing that Google and Microsoft use. It will most likely take some time to refine, but I think people will finally begin to see ads that you don't mind as much. And that's what we can really hope for, because let's face it, ads aren't going away. My only caveat to supporting this is that users need to be able to opt out, at any time, easily.
Hit the jump to get the juicy details of how the system works!
[via: Read/Write Wed]
The system works in three ways:
Business Pages - Businesses can now build their own pages, which will operate (presumably) just like regular pages. Companies can post photos and videos, add friends, and (more importantly) have their activities show up in subcriber's feeds. This will act as a viral marketing piece too as the interactions the subscriber has with the company's page will show up in their mini-feeds. The subscriber's friends will then see these interactions, and (again, presumably) warm up to the products because their friends are using them.
Social Ads And Beacon - This is meaty part of the controversy. These programs will work two-fold with an internal and external component. The internal piece will dissect the information you provide on your profile to attempt to target ads to you. It will take aggregate information like your age and interests and then pull the ads that will be most effective to your demographic. The external part is part of a partnership model companies can participate in with Facebook. When you leave Facebook and go to Coke's website, for example, it will publish that information in your feed, as well as certain information about how you interacted with that site. If you buy something it can publish what you bought, or if you played a flash game on the site it can publish your score with a link to the game, for example.
Insight - This is the updated version of the typical web-based marketing. Advertisers will be sent information about who is clicking on their ads and information about how to better target them.
This really is a break through, in-depth ad machine. If this succeeds (as I think it will) you can rest assured to see many other sites follow suit.
Jesse James
Posted to In the News on 7 November 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: Ads, Advertising, Beacon, Facebook, Social Ads
If it ain't broke... cease production. Right?
please.... its, not it's
mmm... i've noticed targeted advertising of this kind on facebook already, myself and a number of my gay friends see adverts based on sexuality appearing on the LHS for "dating sites" like fitlads.
This i object too, because i browse facebook in university (like so many of the students i teach). Having a line in profile saying sexual preference i didnt think would lead to large (noticeable from afar) adverts for cruising sites :S
regrettably they have persisted after removing sexual preference from profile :(
That's actually what I was worried about too. I feel a little pissed off actually that advertisers think so little of the gay community that if you're sexuality comment states Gay, then all the ads you recieve will be cruising sites.
Myspace has been that way for quite some time... I can only hope that these guys will take other aggregate data about me and see that I also like rock music and violent movies and puzzle games, but only time will tell.