The big news in the world of web 2.0 at the moment is definitely social networks myspace and facebook and more specifically the moves by these two major players to launch their own targeted ad networks (hooray- we like the word TARGETED).
Facebook Ads
On the facebook side of things we are finally seeing the official launch of 'facebook ads'. This is a new targeted advertising offering for businesses from facebook. Facebook ads will be an offering that is made up of three main parts as explained by the official facebook press release:
- a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences
- an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™
- and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about
There are some big brands that have announced their immediate involvement with this new facebook ads scheme including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless.
Myspace Self Service
Myspace have also unveiled plans to roll out their very own targeted advertising network that will be labeled "Self Service by Myspace". This new imaged based ad serving offering will allow advertisers to effectively target and serve up image based advertisements to myspace users.
It is believed that the new offering from myspace will be initially charged on a cost-per-click (CPC) based rate. The initial rates will be determined by the target category. Over time the billing system will apparently be shifted over to more of an auction based system like that of Google Adwords.
Summary
It seems that the direction of the business model strategy that facebook will be taking is becoming a whole lot clearer. The intend to sell advertising, a lot of advertising. No surprises here as there has been a lot of discussion about how facebook intended to stand up and be counted for as the multi billion dollar business that so many believe they are.
To date, facebook have not made any where near what is required to make good on the bulk of the valuations that have been suggested regarding their business. It's time for Mark Zuckerberg (facebook founder and CEO) to start proving the worth of his booming social network and ad sales are probably the smartest way for him to do this.
Myspace are simply following suit......
The good news for all of us in the online marketing space is that these new ad networks on facebook and myspace allow for serious targeting. That means that whilst these sites have predominantly US based subscribers, we can still target the relatively small number of kiwis on them. Better yet, we can do this in a cost effective manner with the shift to cost-per-click billing as opposed to the out dated CPM billing method (cost per 1000 impressions).
Facebook ads and Self Service by Myspace will definitely become an important part of the average kiwi's online marketing arsenal.
If your social marketing plan includes social networking you cannot afford not be seen on MySpace. MySpace dominates the social networking category much like Google dominates the search engine category. Much like the fact that if you are not on Google’ s first page that you are not seen by searchers, if you do not have a presence on MySpace then you are invisible to the social networking community.
Posted by: MySpace Adder | March 19, 2008 at 11:21 PM