A study of over 1,000 social network users by Razorfish reveals that 75% of social network users don’t mind the ads they see on the networks, and 40% report they have utilized the ads and purchased something through them.

However, I’ve noticed many reporting mixed results in their advertising schemes on social networks. Perhaps users don’t mind them because they aren’t that effective? At any rate, Razorfish’s Garrick Schmit makes the essential point about social networking, saying, “Content, in our view, will become advertising.” In other word, the ads and the content of what users are viewing on the network will fuse into one and be the impetus behind social network advertising. See: Facebook Beacon.

When it comes to video advertising–which nobody seems to have perfected yet–users report preferring ads that are incorporated into the video rather than pre-roll ads. This is not exactly a surprise, especially when viewing short ads and taking into account the human instinct of instant gratification.

But does it matter what the users like? Isn’t it results that count? I’m no expert on this, but I’ve heard countless stories of people putting ads on Facebook apps (such as casual games) and getting almost nothing out of them. Is it possible that if people say they like an ad, it means it’s not as effective?

That’s probably not the case, but I can admit that I like Facebook ads and have on occasion clicked on a couple of them. I didn’t buy anything, but I can say that I find them agreeable. Nobody would ever say they like waiting a few minutes for TV ads during a show, yet there is no doubt that television ads work well.

I’m not sure yet how important it is whether a user says they like ads. I’ll make sure to look at this more closely.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 8:31 pmand is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.