SocialMedia, a company that specializes in advertising across social networks, has released a new form of advertising dubbed the “WOMI”, or Word of Mouth Impression. WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.
For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?”. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element. This interaction makes the ads mini-social applications in and of themselves, and have proven to be very successful in trial campaigns.
Research firm Dynamic Logic found that over three months WOMI resulted in increased awareness, favorability, and purchases for the Fortune 500 company running the campaign. In fact, the campaign did so well that it placed among the top 20% of all social media campaigns ever analyzed by the firm, which has been in the business for nine years.
WOMIs are compliant with industry-standard IAB ad sizes, so they can be shown on most sites and social network applications without any customization needed. SocialMedia says that publishers outside of the social networks can also deploy the ads by tapping in vistors’ social graphs using services like Facebook Connect.
Finally, if this kind of personalized ad isn’t your thing, every SocialMedia WOMI will include a sidebar that will allow users to turn them off permanently. For more about WOMIs, check out the demo video below.
I saw some of the early stage concepts of this idea and was very impressed then as well. Its surprising that more ad units don’t leverage the social word-of-mouth aspect as this will. Hopefully ads will either integrate with the conversation or we will see them diminish and have significantly less impact.
Thanks Joey, Happy to hear you like what we’re doing;)
This definitely sounds like a powerful idea. Since its new, people might respond to these ads initially more so to find out what it is. On a long term dont you think there will be a dip in the effectiveness of campaign?
Julia — kudos, very well done!
Julia, could it be that you don’t get it because you’re French? (Relax, it’s US humor)
SocialMedia is a well funded sink. A black hole that has not made anyone but PR and self advertisers happy.
In the 20% of all social media ads ever? Wowzers. The firm claims to have been around for 9 years. Social media didn’t really exist in 2000. Sounds a bit fishy.
SocialMedia.com became a company in 2007. Prior to that Seth purchased the Domain name in 1999 when he thought SocialMedia would become something. If you know anything about Seth he’s ahead of the curve every time.
yeh totally, it only took him 8 years to get it started.
The following paragraph does not seem to say much about anything:
“Research firm Dynamic Logic found that over three months WOMI resulted in increased awareness, favorability, and purchases for the Fortune 500 company running the campaign. In fact, the campaign did so well that it placed among the top 20% of all social media campaigns ever analyzed by the firm, which has been in the business for nine years.”
Increase by how much? 0.0001 Percent?
Top 20 percent of X where X is unknown. Brilliant.
Social Media marketing is now being taken to the next level, i wonder if they can do integration with user’s tweets.
“making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element”
It may be the first to be used for advertising purposes, but what about all those “what type of [noun] are you?” surveys that everyone posts on their myspace pages? Isn’t this the same thing, just placed in a marketing context?
Jason,
http://www.busi...amp;newsLang=en
Please find out who is in talks to buy out Sun Microsystems.
MSFT, IBM or GOOG ??
There is your starting point. I care about this. Please find out and break the story.
Thank, but i just want to try their effects:)
In my mind there’s nothing more powerful than a referral from a friend and besides you can send an personalized ad unit to your network with a picture of yourself via friend graphs (which is entertaining for a change) – who wouldn’t to receive or engage this type of unit. It’s about time we do things differently and monetize on engagement vs. being peddaled punch the monkey and lose belly fat ads.
Wow, that’s really great ads. That would definitely increase CTR. But from which network do they draw the social data from?
TechFilipino
Dang – very interesting, very smart – nice work socialmedia guys.
Great way to track results, but don’t most social networking types use tons of ad blockers? Will they ever see any of these ads?
new way to deliver ads but seem familiar to beacon in a way.
Agreed reminds me of Facebook’s Beacon which they received a lot of negative press about. How will this be avoided?
Wow I need to check this out… I need to hear a success story or two
Silent demos are very ineffective.
Since the First Time actually I love Womi,unless there High cost subscriptions.,I love there marketing system of Word of mouth and more over about socialMedia,if I could compare this to facebook ads,I will chosed Word of mouth rather then Advertising “type adsense”facebook build,I think all social Media should dubbed typical word of mouth like this,cause only this what turn people from “NO BUY MODE”to “buy Mode”
Are there not already countless ads saying “Billy Bob is great, how about you?”. On facebook these types of ads are everywhere. Unless I am missing something this is nothing special. Not to mention users will quickly learn to ignore these ads, if they haven’t started already.
Please tell me how this is different or innovative!
Derek, You’re right in that the concept is not new as many of the facebook apps do this. I think the difference is they applied this to a standard ad unit and two they have the benefit of posting clicks on these ads to users facebook feeds.
can you speak for me? {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/g2cMsqd87n_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”can you speak for me? ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/kqka0E0bHg”}}}
Sounds interesting and a little voyeuristic.