Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook's social advertising system in New York yesterday, and it has nothing to do with banner ads, or text ads. It is, rather, a clever way to capitalise on the rise of fansumers: the sort of people who buy products as a way of making statements about themselves and their aspirations: in other words, it's the off-the-shelf lifestyle business. (Usually, the "statement" is that they have more money than sense.)
To give an example, SugarWater will be able to set up a SugarWater profile page, which they can't correctly do at the moment. People who love SugarWater will then be able to "friend" SugarWater, making their allegiance plain to all their friends. The community of SugarWater fans will be able to reinforce one another's judgement about the superiority of SugarWater over the rival WaterSugar product, from which it is otherwise indistinguishable.
Since this fits the modus operandi of lifestyle marketing, it should do well.
TechCrunch blogged the event, and says:
Facebook is announcing three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. Here are the press releases for Facebook Ads, Project Beacon, and its launch partners.
Web Strategy has a good summary of both the MySpace and Facebook announcements, and A likely scenario for the Facebook system:
Shauna, who enjoys Revlon products, indicates she's a fan of the brand and becomes a Fan-Sumer. Marketers at Revlon can then purchase SocialAds, which will then display on Shauna's newsfeed or on ads on her profile. If Shauna purchases Revlon makeup from Amazon, her newsfeed could indicate an eCommerce links recommending it to her 100 trusted friends, resulting in further sales.
Welcome to Fanbook? Well, as Zuckerberg points out, it's a free ad-supported service. It has to get a payback some time....
