Is anyone else feeling a bit announcement weary?
To recap, we had Microsoft buying that stake in Facebook, then Google announcing its social networking platform OpenSocial, then Google announcing its Android mobile plans and now Facebook has revealed its new advertising system.
Whose willy is waving the most, do we think?
The new Facebook ads system
So the new advertising system on Facebook. There are three parts:
• Facebook Pages - profile pages for companies and organisations.
• Social Ads - which target users according to the demographic data in their profiles
• Facebook Beacon - advertisers offer their own branded applications that users can add to their profile pages.
The first of those makes me slightly nauseous;there is something about monolithic companies setting up a presence on networks designed for individuals that is very clumsy and invasive. But we should expect Facebook's implementation to be fairly slick, given their track record in taking what other social nets have done and making it better.
At the core of these services is the concept that users will embrace and personally endorse the brands they like - a marketeers wet dream, because consumers do the leg work of spreading their message virally. It makes me feel a bit mucky.
Saul Hansell on the New York Times said the notable omission from Facebook's announcement was about the next step; he thinks that involves extending Facebook's phenomenal demographic info to ads outside the site.
"Even more interesting, perhaps, Facebook may be able to append the implicit endorsement of friends to ads on this network. Imaging checking out the forecast on Weather.com, and you see a banner with a picture of your buddy Joe, saying Joe just bought a Canon digital camera from Amazon.com next to an ad for the latest Canon model. If someone else went to the same site, they might see an ad featuring a product recently endorsed by one of his or her friends."
Other details: The system offers a free analytics platform to advertisers to monitor the performance of ads, and this network is separate to the display ads on the site which are still operated by Microsoft, as per that massive, recently extended deal.
Coke, New York Times and other big brands pile in
Facebook has said that Coca-Cola, the New York Times, CondeNet and STA Travel are already on board, along with 40 other brands.
The New York Times Facebook page gives a good example of what this brand interaction involves and despite being just a few hours old, it's already looking pretty healthy. It has NYTimes video, photos, most emailed articles, a news quiz and then more open elements like the wall. NYTimes management won't be displeased with the reel of compliments from people saying how much they "love the NYTimes", but then there hasn't been an editorial scandal for a while.
Getting consumers on board as brand ambassadors is a delicate task. Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch asked whether consumers actually want to do that: "To the extent that endorsing a brand is seen as a way to express your identity or expertise rather than as a way to flog a product, people could embrace it. But advertisers have to be real careful, because if these ads seem too much like ads, people may actually lose friends over it. And those once-happy customers could turn irate quickly."
The privacy concerns
And Om Malik asked very sensibly if this isn't all a privacy nightmare, and emailed Facebook to ask if users are able to opt-out of the whole ads system. The response didn't seem to rule out that data would still be passed from an affiliate site to facebook, so basically the site could be compiling a massive data store of user habits from all those brands. He uses ticket service Fandango as an example.
"This is a privacy disaster waiting to happen. The javascript on the Fandango site pops up a little screen which asks if you want to publish the information on Facebook. If you say no, your friends won't see the information, but apparently Facebook still receives it. This means that if you are a Facebook member, Facebook will know what you are doing on each of their partner sites. And there is no way for you to opt out of that."
Technorati Tags: Facebook, NewYorkTimes, CondeNet
