ComCorp, Inc. Articles

Social Network: An Advertiser’s Target

It has been noted among social networks that they have increasing concern on how they can generate money with their ever increasing popularity. You can name social network available in the net that could be rich with earnings such as Facebook, YouTube, Friendster, and MySpace to name a few. They all have one thing in mind- how they can generate monetary earnings. Their thought may possibly go directly to advertising companies who will take advantage of a large market available in the network. Most marketers believe that if the advertisement is available in places with a network of people, these people will most likely give attention to these advertisements especially if it caught their attention or interests. Additionally, the interested party may possibly stick to the web pages that serve the ads.   

All social networks have access to personal information of the people of different age groups, genders, occupational status, social status, personalities and other data relevant to advertisers who want to target specific marketing niche with their product or services. Taking advantage to this, both the advertisers and the social network can benefit from each other.  

Advertisers put a spotlight on social network because it is their red flag for a wider market where they can offer their product or services. Indeed, social network have not only become popular but have become part of the social culture in today’s world. One of the social networks gaining such popularity is Facebook. It has been observed that reporters have been gathering related stories regarding Facebook and most have also been engrossed into ones involvement to Facebook.  

Nevertheless, Facebook, in spite its increasing popularity, has limited its advertising to “flyers” which, in return, limits advertisers to reach its target market with the small amount of information provided by the flyer against what advertisers need. However, it plans to expand its market by giving advertisers access to several characteristics in the network that advertisers can choose from without exposing the personal profile of its members. With this, Facebook plans to utilize algorithms. This is a tactic that would allow advertisers to know the responsiveness of the target audience to their advertising message. These algorithms would also deal with the interest of the individual as well as the interests of the other people within its network. Its mechanics are known only to advertisers but it does prove effectiveness in terms of personal information security and at the same time, advertiser’s effort to reach the group of market they need.   

MySpace have already employed such strategy while Facebook is still planning on this as it considers its popularity level. MySpace recently launched such advertising platform across it site. This resulted to a negative press against MySpace for employing such tactic with its banner-based advertising and spams that are unsolicited but it cannot be denied that it is also one of the reasons why it is increasing its social network. Facebook better evaluate its plan that would be competitive enough against the strategy that MySpace had already employed.