Matt recently told me that he was starting a blog war with his good friend, Bill Townsend of Interminds LLC over a presentation that Bill gave to Matt’s executive MBA class. I have never met Bill, but after reading his presentation entitled the Black and White of Internet Marketing, I can see that he CLEARLY knows his stuff and that he is actively monitoring the pulse of the digital space. So this is not a knock on Bill, but an attempt to change his thinking on one point: advertising on social media.

In slide 72, Bill gives us a screen shot from Facebook (see blow) with the title: “What Do I Advertise Here?”

To Which I answer “whatever her friends like”, I would assume things like perhaps Axe Body spray, Seven For All Mankind Jeans and Verizon Wireless with unlimited texting:

I think Bill’s argument is more effective if he says: “Why Should I Advertise Here?” and then go back to his heat map slide. I think that the question is whether or not display advertising on the Internet works at all, not whether we should try the established techniques on Social Media advertising effectiveness.

On slide 59, Bill suggests that the way to get someone to click on a banner is to feign interactivity. How about actually creating interactive advertising for social networks? Instead of banner ads, make those ads short films or interactive widgets. These will fit more with the spirit of the medium. Facebook is about interacting. It’s about learning and communicating with friends and sharing experiences virtually. Advertising needs to blend into that space in order to be effective. The more that we can blur the lines between content and advertising, the more effective we will be, particularly as the Facebook generation is one that is more than happy to make an online purchase.

Given the amount of information that all of the little widgets and applications on Facebook collect and the connection to friends and friend’s friends, we should be able to mine all the little applications on facebook and come up with very targeted advertising.

In summary we mine the information on a person’s profile and the profiles of their friends and then incorporate:

• Video
• Widgets
• Games
• Surveys

What would you add to this?

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