An interesting piece from the August 3, 2011 Globe and Mail prompted me to think about media convergence, intrusive advertising and the dawning of Facebook’s demise.
The article was mostly about trumpeting a credible rating system to measure Facebook ads. This is overdue and very much welcomed. But I have another thought regarding the partnership of Microsoft and Facebook. Their relationship has the essential characteristics that motivate large media organizations in a changing landscape – move quickly toward consolidation and convergence to define and dominate the marketplace.
Now, when you use Microsoft’s BING for searches, it will access the Facebook database and display those results, too. I wonder: How long will it take before the hunger of these outfits to use personal profile (Facebook) data to target ever more intrusive campaigns, causes Facebook to become strictly a B2B marketplace, at best, and completely irrelevant at worst.
Business decision-makers can tolerate a lot of shilling. We expect it. It’s vertical. It’s targeted to what we’re exploring, and we have a higher curiosity for “sidebar” suggestions about other relevant products or service offerings. In my view, it can be rationalized as supporting the concept of networking or lateral thinking.
But the general Facebook Friend may not share this same level of tolerance. Signing up on Facebook was all about making friends, sharing imagery and anecdotes, and feeling a little more connected, maybe even a little famous. Not having one’s (volunteered) personal profile used to develop and deploy unwelcomed, yet insidiously specific pitches.
With growing numbers of “targeted” ads encroaching more and more into this environment, Facebook users will likely do what everyone else does when they see ads.
Ignore them, mute them, and/or push the button for another station. That is, unless the ads are truly worthy of one’s attention. Sadly, that kind of ad creative remains in rare supply. Besides, creating killer creative is always major challenge. Now, quick! Do it on postage stamp. That’s your canvas.
The day may soon come when the Facebook user (and ad-adverse consumer) pushes this growing shill fest to the curb. Or perhaps a cadre of culture jammers will finds ways to create false profiles, en masse, to derail the veracity of Facebook’s data, rendering the hype over the new measuring regime just that. What good is measuring crap?
Now that’s a hacking job some poor creature at Facebook is probably losing sleep over. And not something anyone at Facebook or Microsoft will LIKE.
"Agencies rate Facebook ads" The Globe and Mail, August 3rd 2011
“Or perhaps a cadre of culture jammers will finds ways to create false profiles, en masse, to derail the veracity of Facebook’s data”
This is actually a two-way street, and both ends are potentially bad for advertisers. Facebook has already been the victim of numerous exploits recently, mainly wall-to-wall jumping viruses, and sinister applications. All it takes is one click to transmit all your personal information to the Nike corporation, or the hacker masquerading as such. How do you know who is on the other end when the two are indistinguishable on user end?
And when the inevitable occurs? The hacker will remain anonymous, and the user will only remember that it was a McDonalds advertisement that stole their credit card info.