I am addicted to Facebook. I’ll admit it and don’t even cringe anymore when I hear it called by its other name: Crackbook. The reality is that I check my Facebook account between 4-6 times a day, nearly every time I check my e-mail. How can I admit this compulsion so easily? Because I am positive that I am not alone in this habit (thanks to the Facebook IM feature I can now see which of my friends are logged in too).
For those of you who have only just recently emerged from that cave you were living in somewhere in Nepal, a quick background on Facebook before I get to my point for the week. Facebook is a social networking website, which means essentially that the point of the site is to provide the tools and applications used for building an on-line community. These sites provide the platform and the space and the users provide the content. Perhaps before you arrived in Nepal you heard of MySpace. Launched in 2003 it was the first social networking site to gain popular use in North America, but has since been overtaken in terms of accounts and unique individual visitors daily by the aforementioned Facebook. Originally founded as a tool to connect Harvard University students, Facebook is now available in numerous countries around the world, in over 25 languages and boasts over 110 million accounts. Scientifically speaking, that equals a ‘whole buncha’ eyeballs! Which brings me to my point.
Facebook is marketing magic, or at least has the potential to create and control the crystal ball, for two reasons. First and foremost, it is a goldmine of market research and demographic information. No need to craft an enticing survey to get the low down on what a market segment is excited about. Every second of every minute of ever day, people around the world are freely writing about and connecting themselves to trends, friends, finds, and all kinds of specific descriptors. All of which is being stored by Facebook to use as research for marketing campaigns and the sale of ad space. How do I know that they (or at least some sort of algorithm) is paying attention to the content I am adding to my Facebook page? Because, the ads on my page match the content (check your page, they will match too – creepy, I know!)
This is called “targeting” or “contextual” advertising and Facebook has been at it for a while, according to an article in Tech Crunch by Duncan Riley. From an efficiency and clutter reduction point of view, this can be seen as a good thing for consumers. Unlike the continual spam I get in my e-mail for “male member enhancement aids”, the ads I see on my Facebook page might actually be applicable. Not only does this mean that Facebook can charge a higher rate for ads ($10 CPM as of 2007), but it increases the likelihood that users will respond to the ad because it speaks directly to that user’s need.
The second trick up Facebook’s sleeve is that they have not relied on this “targeting” technique alone. They have gone one step further and provided a direct opportunity for users to interact with the ads on their pages. Next time you are on Facebook look for the small thumbs up and thumbs down you’ll see below every ad. If you click on them, they allow you to rate the ad you are seeing. You can let Facebook know if this ad is applicable to you, or if you find it offensive or irrelevant (just two of the many optional reasons for giving an ad a thumbs down).
In these two ways Facebook is poised to take the lead in contextual advertising, building a database of information that may allow them to crack that ever elusive code and begin to successfully predict and pre-emptively offer to meet the needs of consumers.
