Why ads fail on social sites

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Why ads fail on social sites

Monday, February 11, 2008 11:16 AM | Social Web 2.0 Social Media Technology Social Networking

I've been following some interesting conversations around the Net regarding advertising on social networking sites.

The consensus is that ads don't monetize well on social sites for several reasons, and I have outlined several reasons that I feel are the cause behind the lack of action on the users part.

1) The casual "hanging out" atmosphere of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook tend to make it hard for advertisers to get meaningful clicks and actions. It's the same mindset for people sitting in front of the television on the weekend watching sports or a favorite show. Can you remember a commercial on TV when you were just sitting and relaxing? Same thing happens on social network sites. Pretty much, they just fade into the background noise and you really don't see the ads. When users are not in a buying mood nothing is going to appeal to them, not even ads targeted to their current activity.

2) The ads on these sites require the user to leave the site most of the time and let's face it, these users would rather be socializing than going from site to site buying things. They just aren't in the mood.

3) This item is from my own personal experience. When I am involved in reading news, socializing, etc. I rarely see the ads on the page. My mind skips over them and it is as if there were no distractions on the pages at all. I think with the popularity of socializing on the Internet has caused more and more users to completely ignore advertising. Even animated and video ads just don’t catch the users attention.

4) I think also that the more annoying the advertising the more the mind tends to ignore them. Take video ads for example, I used to remember and could even recall many of them after seeing them. I’ve been racking my brain all morning and I can’t remember a single video ad that I’ve seen today or even in the last week. I guess my conscious self is now trained to ignore them.

Of course changing formats and tactics aren’t really going to do much either. Let’s face it social networking has changed the face of online advertising forever.

Comments

Posted by Jake on 2/11/2008 11:48 AM: Personally I can only remember ads that have a very strong brand attached to them. For example Netflix, Coke, GMC or others like that. I can believe on social networks that these fail. Just as you said I am there to look at news, not buy anything. I think it's definitely a different atmosphere compared to portals such as iGoogle or MyYahoo where I seem to be more apt to click on ads if I see something of interest.
Posted by Angel on 2/12/2008 1:10 PM: Great facts on advertising on social networking sites. Most important i would say is that people's brain memorizes where the ad is and excludes that area when browsing through them.
That's a huge issue for the owners and people who want to advertise on such social networks but the thing is that they have so much traffic that if you have a good ad with a good message and call to action, people will click it no matter what. After all they're getting so much traffic that if you're paying upon click (and that's the case with most of the social networks) you don't care if people don't click and on the other hand you're sure that those people who do click, they're interested on your ad.
Posted by Jim on 2/15/2008 8:43 PM: Great facts Indeed. I totaly agree with Angel. Although if you are a webmaster you must never trust the social network sites. I think that search engines are must more valuable because the people will find exactly what they wish. Many people have tried to raise their sites with social netoworks but they failed. The only thing that makes social netoworks helpful is the alexa rank :)
Thank you.

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