How does Facebook feature in your online advertising campaign?

Facebook. All the cool guys are doing it. Are you?

For advertisers, it’s a tough market to pass up. So many people in one place at a time. Marketers see something like this and it’s like their dreams have come true. It has that shiny, shiny exterior that seems to say come to us. Have numbers.

Numbers are important in a marketing campaign. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Yet in the world of Facebook, some of those numbers have gotten them into trouble. The reason is that in recent times Facebook introduced a new advertising platform. A platform that gathered numbers that not everyone was comfortable parting ways with.

Numbers and demographics. Demographics tell advertisers who they are and where their potential customers are. When millions and millions of users post their personal information to a social site, all of the sudden demographic research becomes much easier than ever.

But do not notify your users or give them a chance to opt out of the platform completely, and there will be a huge opinion reaction. In the space of a month, the site can go from “have you tried it yet” to “remembering when everyone liked it?”

Online advertising drives online development. We all understand this and, to some extent, we have all come to accept it. So much so that we hardly notice it anymore.

Here’s a quick thought experiment. Did you check your email this morning? Do you check it every day? It is a fairly common practice. Did you know there were advertisements around your message? We all know they are there. Sparkles, pretty colors, or bold creative titles. They are always close … only on the periphery of our vision.

Now, do you remember just one? Do you even remember what they sold?

I guess probably not.

Online advertising is the epitome of selling in the moment. If the pretty colors or particular text catches your eye at the moment, you can click on it. But that means the truth is that it depends as much on sheer momentum as it is on demographics.

Facebook is the latest in a line of platforms trying to provide the opportunity for targeted advertising. Isn’t it nice of you? We will use your personal information to deliver targeted advertising, because we have to advertise, so it could also be for things that you have given us clues that you really like. Oh, and we could sell your information to others so they can share this opportunity.

But at least they have given us the chance to receive the ads we want to see.

Expect. Ads that want to see?

Is personal information being used to determine likes and dislikes?

Let’s be honest. Nobody wants ads. And deploying an advertising platform and promoting it as beneficial to a user base is not fooling anyone. And in the wake of the backlash from this platform, Facebook has changed some of its policies and made it easier to choose to participate or not participate in the program.

So what about the usual online social media advertising like this? It is effective? Does demographics reduce drive dependency? Or are users of social sites so focused on content that advertising doesn’t even register on them?

Studies have shown that common user trends lean toward the latter option. Click-through rates for page views on Facebook (and other social sites) are extremely low.

People seem to be too busy socializing to even give in to impulsive clicks.

Does that mean you don’t need to consider social media in your online ad campaign?

Not at all. While there are discussions about the staying power of Web 2.0 applications and if we are on the verge of another bubble bursting, that is irrelevant to the current discussion.

In the here and now the community works. Ads may not, but advertising is not your only option on these networks.

Community works because users feel that you have their interests in mind, rather than just yours. Community is about communication, and that might be the best publicity you could hope for.