laser genesis and acne…

allegra tucson…

so here’s the deal: if there’s only a summary on the story; no ads. i’ll follow the link to the site and see your ads there.

if the whole article comes thru, fine, then i can handle an ad at the bottom. otherwise F.O.!! i’m already getting just headlines AND ads.

not to mention flash ads that march across the text as your reading or obscure the article all together. much more of this and you can take your articles and shove it. i’d rather be ignorant of the story.

thanks for letting me vent.

I think traditional contextual advertising (AdWords, etc.) will still be ineffective for most social networks. People use social networks to socialize. They’re not there to consume. If you have AdWords, for instance, placed in a standard position on the site, it really doesn’t matter if the ad is contextual/relevant. It’s ignored by most users. Again, a great exercise is to actually watch users as they browse MySpace and Facebook. I haven’t spent 100s of hours doing this, but even with several different users, I’ve yet to see a single one stop and click on an ad. Clearly it happens, but that’s inevitable given the number of pageviews they serve up. The ratios, however, are horrible. The problem is probably amplified because of the demographics of MySpace and Facebook. Today’s kids aren’t dumb and they’ve become highly adept at ignoring advertising that doesn’t interest them.

Again, I believe the successful model for social network advertising will be highly integrated promotions that make brands/advertisers part of the experience and offer some tangible value to the user for this type of interaction. MySpace is leaning towards this model, and they have opportunities they’re not yet tapping. As previously noted, Dogster has done some interesting integrated promotions. Xuqa has apparently found a way to get its users to engage in activity advertisers want by awarding “peanuts” for participation in offers. Even Facebook’s iTunes promo was a step in the right direction.

Online advertising is hot, and there’s a lot of interest in testing out advertising on social networks because that’s where the users are. But in the long run, if the results from campaigns are not in line with the costs, advertisers will put their money elsewhere. Thus, these social networks must find more innovative models that deliver results or they’ll be forced to continue selling ads at heavily discounted rates. They should be focused on increasing the success of their advertisers’ campaigns, not on simply selling more ads at higher cost.

This is one of the reasons I’m a big critic of Yahoo’s $900 million Facebook buyout offer. I doubt whether Yahoo has the ability to increase advertising sales enough to recoup a $900 million investment on a $50 million/year company in the time that would be satisfactory to shareholders. News Corp. has done an incredible job with MySpace, but I think they’re the exception rather than the rule. Most major acquisitions end up destroying shareholder value, and right now the stock market is not placing a vote of confidence in Yahoo’s management. They have had some major bombs in the past (Broadcast.com - $5+ billion) and their purchase of companies like Flickr (which has low overall marketshare) is negative in the minds of many investors because it highlights how they missed the opportunity to build these services themselves. The $20-$30 million they’ve reportedly paid for many of these young startups created on shoestring budgets is not materially affecting the company’s finances, but it isn’t very encouraging that they’re having to do this. It demonstrates that, as an organization, they’ve lost their innovative culture and ability to compete in a highly-competitive, fast-paced market. A Facebook acquisition would be a major sign that they’ve reached a certain level of desepration.

Chief Revenue Officer isn’t all that uncommon in the field of advertising. Whether it’s a “chief” role, VP or Director, companies that generate a lot of inventory need someone in charge of optimizing the value of that inventory, and balancing revenue generation, ad frequency and relevance.

Click-thru rates for standard ad units on social networks are indeed horrible, worse than the standard .4-.6% you can usually get with non-targeted (run-of-network) advertising.

Studies have shown that people much prefer relevant online advertising — targeted to their interests. Relevance also results in a superior revenue model for the publisher, because it results in the best click-thru for advertisers.

Just as spyware served as the revenue model for peer-to-peer file sharing, I think contextual/behavioral advertising platforms (albeit oriented towards privacy and respect of users) will ultimately serve as the revenue model for the rather broad social networking category.

Surely that has to win the best comment on Techcrunch award

Over the past few months, Facebook has been releasing a slew of new features that I feel completely eliminate any distinct advantages that they had over the other social networking systems.  Every single social network right now is trying to make mone…

Maybe MediaWeek’s reporter was drunk at the time or perhaps Facebook is now leaking information on possible features to get feedback? It eliminates the costs of actually running focus groups and doing user research. After all, the following high-paid Facebook executives need to get their salaries:

Chief Executive Officer
Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for waking up by 1 pm three days a week to handle the afternoon-to-afternoon management of the company.

Chief Revenue Officer
Comes up with new ideas on how to generate revenue while completely alienating Facebook’s userbase.

Chief Idea Officer
Develops new ideas about features that can get massive press attention for Facebook. Works closely with the Chief Revenue Officer to develop monetization models for these features.

Chief Financial Officer
Manages the finances of the company. Personally tracks every ad click on the site and sends out an update to the Chief Poking Officer, who “pokes” all employees with the news that somebody has clicked on an ad. Responsible for ensuring that Facebook’s burn rate is growing at a faster clip than the industry average and for coming up with new accounting methodologies to justify a $2 billion valuation. Is the creator of the VIRAL (Valuation Is Really A Lie) accounting system.

Chief Marketing Officer
Handles marketing for Facebook. Works closely with the Chief Idea Officer to decide what horrible features will get Facebook the most press at major media outlets. Manages the Facebook Flyer Program. Facebook is the largest printer of flyers (and consequently toiletpaper) in the world.

Chief Damage Control Officer
Responsible for cleaning up the mess after Facebook launches a new feature that causes a backlash.

Chief Scheduling Officer
Has the duty of coordinating the schedules of key business meetings around Mark Zuckerberg’s sleep schedule and dates with his girlfriend(s).

Chief Acquisitions Officer
Informs major media and technology companies that Facebook is turning down their buyout offer. Works closely with the Chief Scheduling Officer to appologize for Mark Zuckerberg’s inability to participate in acquisition discussions because he is either sleeping, on a date with his girlfriend or planning his purchase of a small island in the Pacific to be the new Facebook headquarters.

Chief Catering Officer
Responsible for coordinating Facebook’s daily catered breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as the Friday Happy Hour and ensuring that all catering comes in over budget.

Chief Vacation Officer
Duties include assisting Facebook staff members take advantage of the 21 vacation days per year, plus 8 company holidays and 2 floating holidays. Offers travel advice and books reservations.

Chief Recreation Officer
Oversees the smooth operation of Facebook’s game room and subsidized gym membership program.

Chief Rivalry Officer
Responsible for managing the rivalry with Mark Zuckerberg’s arch nemesis, Aaron Greenspan.

Chief Dry Cleaning Officer
Because Facebook has dry cleaning services on site, the CDCO manages all dy cleaning operations to ensure that the complementary Armani suits given to all new hires are in tip-top shape.

Chief Pimping Officer
Does the hard work of browsing the Facebook network for hot college coeds and inviting them to special “beta testing” sessions at Facebook headquarters.

Chief Privacy Officer
Responsible for coming up with innovative campaigns that demonstrate to all Facebook users how much information the company collects on them and how it can be publicly broadcast to as many parties as possible.

Chief Stalking Officer
Works closely with the Chief Idea Officer and Chief Privacy Offer to develop new, more efficient ways of stalking Facebook users. Meets daily with the Chief Pimping Officer to assist him in implementing these new stalking methodologies to locate hot coeds to invite to the previously mentioned “beta testing” sessions.

Chief Memcached Officer
Not to be mistaken with the other CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) role, this CMO manages all of Facebook’s work with the Memcached system, which Facebook is the largest user of in the world.

Chief Chief Officer Officer
Manages and supervises all Chief Officers.

I’m sure I left about 10 other officers out, but these are really the ones that make the biggest contribution to Facebook’s success. For those of you who question Yahoo’s sanity for wanting to purchase Facebook for $900 million, I’d argue that Yahoo doesn’t care about the site - they want these talented people. With Yahoo’s ad revenues declining in key categories, it makes complete sense for them to buy a company with $50 million in ad revenues for $900 million with the assumption that collectively they’ll be able to figure out ways to get on track. That’s where Facebook’s Chief Revenue Officer excels. What could go wrong? Please don’t mention Broadcast.com, Geocities, eGroups, Arthas (which became Yahoo PayDirect). Yahoo learned from those mistakes and once the market sees the wisdom in buying every Web 2.0 company it can get its hands on (Flickr, del.icio.us, Jumpcut, etc.) their stock price will go from its current near 52-week low to over $100.

Imagine getting a news feed on FaceBook about a friend breaking up with someone and then one line down, it shows an unwanted marketing message about how to get a hot date. Well, according to MediaWee……

Update: Melanie Deitch, Facebook’s Director of Marketing, emailed to tell us that the MediaWeek story we linked to below was incorrect and that in fact, no unsolicited notices will be sent. Only users who have elected to join a sponsored group will be notified when friends in that group click one of the group’s ads.