The rapid rise of social networking has seen a change in the way advertisers, and agencies, access customers.
By their very nature, social networking sites are built organically as one individual ‘links’ with another (whether that be a friend, a family member, a work colleague, a similar demographic, etc) due to a shared interest, history, need or location.
There are two ways in which to promote products and services to a social network. Unsurprisingly, many of the networks offer the classic “media buy” scenario where you can purchase banner placements on a cost per thousand or cost per click basis. This service becomes interesting when the breadth of targeting is made use of. Due to the fact that users have to “sign up” to be a part of the network generally means that they, at the very least, will provide their date of birth, gender and location. With additional information such as favourite movie, job role and level of education available, targeting becomes more specific and conversions increase accordingly (as, of course, do media rates).
The second route to these users is “by association” which can cover recommendations of products from peers and the sponsorship of applications (bespoke pieces of software that offer a service or have some entertainment value, are generally developed by a third-party and are designed specifically to fit within the social network’s functionality). There are many ways that TBG can implement “by association” advertising on your behalf, from seeding a product or service to developing an application that is tailored to your business and to your target customer, resulting in a positive impact on your brand and, ultimately, your results.
By all accounts, ad spend on social networking is set to continue to rise; in the US alone, spend is expected to reach $2.5 billion in 2011 which is an increase of 180% from 2007. Even though the majority of this spend is on the leading networks MySpace and Facebook (72% in 2007) it is vital that the smaller, more specialist social networks should made use. Although the volume of traffic that these sites can provide is lower, if creative design and messaging is tailored to the placement, the resulting conversion rates are dramatically higher and therefore ROI is increased. For example, American Express Platinum Charge Card placements on business networking site, LinkedIn, are showing top level conversion rates due to the matching of target demographic and site demographic, together with tailored creative.
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