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Social Media

Requiem for a Paper Towel Widget

Posted by Masha Geller on November 19, 2008 at 10:00 PM PDT

Over the last few months, I’ve been party to countless conversations about the effectiveness of advertising on social networks. It’s a hot topic and everyone’s got an opinion.

I’ve always been fairly impartial given that I’m neither a representative of a social network or an advertiser myself, so I’m usually either a moderator or an observer of these debates. And, more often than not, I walk away annoyed.

Annoyed, partially, at the ultimate futility of these conversations because there’s really no data yet to either prove or disprove any aggregate points, but mostly at the inability of the opponents to look beyond their immediate desires for everyone to jump on a bandwagon and instead look at the big picture first.

The other day, Ted McConnell, Procter & Gamble's GM for interactive marketing and innovation, told an assembly in Cincinnati that he doesn’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook. "I think when we call it 'consumer-generated media,' we're being predatory," he said. "Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

Immediately, the online senate got its collective toga in a bunch, some agreeing with McConnell, some saying that it’s time for the industry to recognize social media as such because there’s proof that social network ads work and there’s countless data to prove that. Some even said that McConnell misunderstands the meaning of the word “media.”

Why am I annoyed? Granted, at first, his comment reminded me of the privacy firestorm Google faced for about a minute a while back when they started scanning my gmail and eventually settled on serving ads for Spam burger recipes alongside my spam folder. Why I got annoyed is simply this – people just didn’t get his point and turned it into a negative assessment of social networking, which is not what he said. He simply said that Facebook may not be the appropriate place to market P&G brands. The statement of his that everyone chose to ignore was, “I don’t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry.”

Why do we always forget that not every vehicle is right for every brand? Why does everything have to be everywhere? Come on folks, you have to admit that designing an interactive Facebook app for Duracell batteries would be as effective as advertising Tampax on a urinal.

For some brands, social networks are perfect. For instance, Lexus today unveiled a “contextually-relevant social media sponsorship program” integrated with NBC News’ iCue Facebook application where Lexus shares its three low-emission hybrid vehicles with iCue consumers through the Innovation & Technology and In the News content. That actually makes sense. A Charmin toilet tissue widget on MySpace, however, doesn’t seem to.

And as far as data is concerned (I know some of you are still steaming from what I said in the second paragraph,) yes, the word “data” always sends me into a tailspin because there are no agreed-upon success metrics for social network advertising. Sadly, some advertisers are still robotically measuring CTRs and passing them off as valuable indicators of whatever the client wants proven effective. Moreover, market research firms such as comScore don’t measure newly developed types of social networking ads, as eMarketer reported on Wednesday, citing that “many of the ad formats that social media sites are experimenting with are too new to be tracked via existing measurement techniques.”

So, as far as “data” is concerned, let’s not overuse that word just yet and just agree, without getting into the last cookie debate (a fascinating topic in itself,) that there are indeed cases showing how social network ads helped advertisers accomplish various goals and just say – sincerely -- kudos to them.

And please, before we debate their effectiveness, let's first ask if social network ads make sense for a particular brand and WHY. Otherwise the next thing you know you’ll be getting Twitter updates from a paper towel.

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