Zantay: Social Marketing Consultant

I recently read an article over at emarketer explaining that they expect advertising on social networks like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook to bring in more than $2 Billion in revenue by 2010. Don’t they get it yet!

Social networks by their very existence work by connecting people to people, groups to groups, interests to interests. Why would someone be interested in clicking on a banner when there focussed on finding out what there friends have been up to?

If the advertising platform on these networks becomes intrusive then the users of the networks will leave to find a new network that doesn’t interrupt. The new Facebook adwords based system won’t work because people aren’t in a search mode, that being the reason the adwords system works so well for Google.Google created based on how people interacted with there search interface. How many websites have copied adwords and failed? Quite a few I imagine.

The social networks have to find new ways to deliver advertising to the users on the networks without interrupting them.

I’ve had a think about this and the networks have to do something different form traditional online banners and contextual ads.

One method that hasn’t been tried yet is to use the very power of the network community.

• Buy product reviews
  • Send products to users
  • Pay for reviews
  • Make it easy for them to tell friends
• Create people and groups
  • Create product based people
    • Fake CEO, Fake user of product

This may be seen as being to meaner of two evils but it will allow a vast majority of network users to never see advertsing. Allowing the social networks to stay pure.

Does anyone else have idea’s on this?