Advertisers are desperate for new inventory and business models, and the marketing promise from the sheer eyeballs alone within social networks can be huge. But what about advertisers that want to rely on both relevance and true “influence” to reach a more engaged consumer? Consider that some of the most influential conversations on the Web are happening outside of social networks, within the blogs whose credibility and expertise drive a large and loyal following of Internet users.
These influential conversations that consumers navigate as they research products and services go far beyond individual “closed” networks. They are happening all across the Web, and blog readers represent one of the most highly engaged audiences online. According to a 2007 Synovate survey, 65 million Americans are reading blogs, and more than 60 percent doing so explicitly to be influenced by something. This audience is largely untapped, and it's ripe for the right message, at the right time.
The marketing potential of social networks and other areas that breed user-generated content is primarily untapped. However, are ads within social networks providing the most relevant information available, or are they served out of context? At the heart of the issue is the intent and psychology of users within the social net and their tolerance for marketing and branding efforts.
Instead of just throwing out ads based on what they think a person may like, a marketer should consider the level of influence that one person exerts over another. This consumer influence actually makes for true credibility or expertise -- and is likely to convert into a sale or even a meaningful interaction with an engaged consumer.
Consider Oprah’s renowned (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) Book Club. One mention from Oprah will take a book from complete obscurity to the bestseller list, but how many people can actually count Oprah as a “friend,” virtual or otherwise? Following this line of thinking, you could argue that a consumer’s “social graph” is unlikely to be the single most influential entity during the buying cycle, and that marketers must consider the real credibility and expertise that exists outside of the walls of the social networks.
When assessing new advertising opportunities within blogs, social networks, and other forms of user-generated content, a marketer needs to think in terms of relevance and maximizing online influence. Search marketing nails the issue of relevance, but it misses the mark in the credibility department. Behavioral targeting gets at the heart of consumer behavior but has been fettered by privacy concerns. Social networks offer advertisers the opportunity to target millions of highly engaged consumers, but, apart from privacy issues, they miss out on finding the real influencers.
So, before a marketer shoots off a bunch of arrows, he should consider a more measured approach that may hit the bullseye with one shot. After all, influence is golden when used appropriately, and there is a huge opportunity for marketers to put their best foot forward by influencing the influencers.
— Rob Crumpler, President and Chief Executive Officer of Buzzlogic
I do agree with you that those influential advertisement have the best effect on people but you need to build that trust, create that image - it has taken Oprah quite a time to have that type of influence.
Social Networking advertisement has the benefit that the information is there, and most people are sincere in the information they put online. When I put I like The Beatles, why isn't anyone offering me the new Across The Universe DVD? - There's a privacy issue in the middle, but if it's done right, I don't think I'd mind.
None of us have been consulted as to whether we even like advertising, and I'm tired of hearing discussions of the future taking it for granted that "advertising is the necessary engine of support and development" for anything. Advertising as we know it today derives from the early days of radio and abuse at the FCC (telecom act of 1934.) The extension of advertising as the means of making things "free" (you don't have to pay to use this service, instead we show you ads and derive our revenues from the 0.1% of the respondents to the ads) is a hideous distortion of human commerce and helps dilute meaning and accountability. I can be a crappy plumber, but if my ads are successful I can market myself as "the Number One plumber" and people will be falsely influenced - not by my skill, but by my advertising dollars. "Business" takes for granted as proven its right to invade every sphere of human activity to paste its own content and messages onto, and I say that's philosophically (and democratically) baseless.
I'm tired of seeing and hearing "development" and "the future" being engineered by capital-flush groups of investors and CEOs on the basis of ad revenues (Google the prime example.) Brin and Page serve their investors, not the public; while they can claim to be addressing "our needs", they overtly ignore our need for Privacy and feel entitled to help themselves to access and modify our consciousness in the process. I say that no model that treats my consent as implicit can be valid. I'm sorry, but this discussion ends up being political with political labels - I don't believe in the Economic Philosophies that run our economy - and I don't see the public as a target for Libertarian/Corporate plunder and abuse. I claim that we (the People) can demand we reengineer our economic system to represent reality more appropriately to serve human needs, and I wish to see "advertising" GO AWAY as it's currently employed. I don't need to see any ads on site X for anything not directly concerned with site X, and if we have to find a way to represent microcredits (my use of your site just now cost me $0.0005) then that's what we should do.
Just as the purpose of human existence is not to "grow up to be a Capitalist warrior, to ascend a power-pyramid of influence and control" (the only 'founding father' who might have espoused this view was Alexander Hamilton ), the Internet, in my opinion as a user of it, is not "where everything has ads placed on it". We need to find new ways for people to find things of interest to them, and that's not hard to do.
We hate SPAM, don't we? And what is SPAM but something arriving to steal our attention? The SPAMMER doesn't care if their message targets 1,000,000 people who don't like the SPAM, if just 100 people respond to buy whatever the SPAM advertises. We (the People) have tried to make SPAM illegal and GO AWAY. I say there is no particular difference between email SPAM and site ads, especially those ads that move or change, as in blink, jitter, fade in and out, etc., and particularly those that refuse to quit changing after I've pressed ESCAPE. These ads hook in the usual 1 in 10,000, leaving 9,999 offended, harassed, bored, disinterested viewers, and I for one think this whole arrangement is bankrupt and headed for meaninglessness. We can live a life without drowning in advertisements; and that's the life I think most of us would want, if it were offered. Since the moneyed interests aren't interested in giving us access to such a life, we'll have to do that for ourselves through action (boycotts) and law. When people write essays taking the onslaught of "ads everywhere" for granted, I suggest we recognize that such people are part of the problem, and reject their ad-laden, ad-supported logic. If I end up being a famous plumber, that needs to be because I am a really good plumber - not one rich enough to advertise myself into first place.
From a letter to Gavin Newsom (see dumpgoogle.com): "Google rearranges the results of its searches for a
fee. I could be the stupidest plumber who ever lived, but if I have the
cash, I can be the number one plumber on the Internet, according to Google, for as long as I can afford it. Money trumps meaning, quality, proficiency, integrity, references and community support."
Not all advertising is malign - but it's hard to find the baby in so much bathwater. I want advertisements OFF my City's buses, OUT of my City's subway. I will NOT ATTEND an event in a venue named after a CORPORATION. We need to fix an economic system that forces us to get our money back from someone else (doing something they want us to do in the process.) That's just extortion and we needn't tolerate it.
So, if there would EVER EVER be "ads in the social networking space", they should be ads chosen only by the groups in question and not some third-party marketing agent; or maybe no ads at all, wouldn't that be - progressive.
My lawyers tell me that I need to let every MySpace user know that MySpace's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy have been updated. Feel free to take a look at them:
Don't worry everyone received this message from me, and this doesn't
mean we are charging. MySpace is still free!
** Don't worry.....the features of the MySpace Services, or technology, and such modifications shall be effective upon posting by MySpace on the MySpace Website.Your continued use of the MySpace Services after MySpace posts a revised Privacy Policy signifies your acceptance of the revised Privacy Policy. *** i wonder who will read this!
Diffent states have different laws concerning the age of consent, although each state in the U.S. does have an agent of consent, and laws surrounding it.
Credit: morguefile.com
Age of Consent: Contracts & Agreements
Minors under the age of consent cannot sign contracts or agreements, and if they do, the documents are not legally valid and will not hold up in court. Those documents might include housing leases, business negotiations, bills of sale or any agreement that requires consent.
In most states, parents and/or guardians can sign contracts and agreements on behalf of their minor children, but it is the adults who must manage the agreement and who are liable for problems associated with such. For example, if parents of a minor child sign a bill of sale for a vehicle for the child, then fail to make the payments, it will be the parents who are sued in court, and not the minor child.
I agree. There is nothing more annoying than trying to get something done, and everytime you type an ad pops up. And although I use the pop up blocker, ads still seems to pop up. There should be a way that it can be done without turning consumers away.
I would agree with Nicole that advertising on blogs balances a thin line between being informative or completely annoying...so beware of becoming what fellow thinkernetter Tom Hayes just called 'attention thieves'. I think it's very interesting to see both 'sides' of online advertising writing posts on IE––looking forward to see Rob Crumpler and Tom Hayes react to each other!
A general question that pops up while reading this post, is how exactly this 'advertising based on expert's opinion' works in a temporal way. Most topics on blogs generate a very short attention span, most people read, react and move on. If one wants to specifically advertise on a tread of a certain blog that addresses things tangental to what one wants to sell, one will have to be really fast to get one's ad on while folks are still actually interested in this thread. Basing your (buzzlogic's) strategy on the overall topics of blogs doesn't seem so novel to me, so I would think that you actually want to target specific threads.
So how do you do that? I wonder if you base your strategy on actual human research, or do you simply parse feeds and automate the whole process? Both have their benefits and disadvantages of course...
I find the posting from Buzzlogic rep Rob Crumpler a bit too self-serving since his company's claim is to filter out the blog "influencers." You have to take his advice with a pound of salt since his argument is one big ad for his company. Can we have some independent thinkers instead of self-promoters on here?
Aside from major privacy issues, I think the issue with advertisements on social networks is that we don't sign into our social networks with a social mindset, not a consumer mindset. This may be the case with blogs as well, but perhaps to a greater extent. If I'm reading a blog, it's because I want to take in the information provided in that blog and move on. That's a specific goal. However, I do agree that -- in comparison to social networks -- the blogosphere may be better suited for ads if the blogs mention specific products. The challenge is to avoid giving blogs the spammy feel that sites like MySpace have -- because that can turn readers/consumers away.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
Blogs are experiencing something of a second wave. As blogging becomes even more mainstream, it's given an increasing number of consumers a shot at global publishing power. For the online marketing world, understanding how to leverage these independent publishers as a means to carry a message -- whether it's ad placement or editorial coverage -- is critical.
While Google introduces its new Chrome OS (which I'm hearing will be widely available in one year? Did I mishear that?), IBM announced 10 new products today to help companies using IBM System z mainframe technology.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Steve Saunders talks about the risks inherent in uncontrolled, widespread profiling of Internet users, and how one day this practice could form the basis of a new industry, the Outernet, which in economic terms will have outgrown the commercial value of the Internet itself.
Search companies and social networks are collecting incredibly detailed information about their users, says Steve Saunders, who predicts that these 'profiles' could one day become commodities to be bought and sold by companies on 'profile markets' or 'identity exchanges’ – the digital DNA equivalents of the financial and commodities exchanges on which stocks, oil, and gold are traded.
One of the most important Internet issues of all time is being ignored by the media. In this three-part video series Steve Saunders explains how search companies are turning the tables on their users by creating user profiles for financial gain, and how soon this trend will explode into full scale profiling.
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The US loses about $20 billion a year on pirated software, movies, and music. But public policy can help stem the tide of digital theft. For example, France has recently passed a 'three strikes and you’re out' law, whereby if after two warning letters an individual continues to download pirated software then his Internet access will be cut off. US policy makers should consider adopting similar policies.
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