Facebook Advertising: Potential and Pitfall as Brand Marketing Strategy

July 28th, 2010 by Brian Posnanski

While it’s hard to get a definitive sense of just how effective companies on the whole have found Facebook display advertising to be, to quote Mr. Clapton, it’s fair to say this: it’s in the way that you use it.

When Facebook first unveiled the ad option three years ago, reviews were mixed from the start. Many marketers and Facebook users continue to be convinced that the placement of the supposedly “targeted” ads is often irrelevant, at best, and annoying—even alarming—at worst.

As The New York Times noted this spring, “Odd Web ads, like the dancing women promoting mortgage brokers, are not new. But on social networks like Facebook, where people go to communicate with one another, advertisers seem to be trying especially hard to intrude on the conversation.” The Times report goes on to discuss ad campaigns ranging from creepy to successful and from clever to deeply off-putting.

Obviously, along with the great power that Facebook’s demographics-oriented platform offers to advertisers comes great responsibility. The results of inappropriately targeting an audience can be harmful and counterproductive. But for companies drawing on rational and creative resources in thoughtful ways, the opportunity for positive results is enormous.

Ads that emphasize content and/or interests and causes rather than a product to buy are far more intriguing than those stuck on direct self-promotion. The pitfalls that the worst among the bunch display are pretty common-sense things to avoid, but here are some examples: An ad titled “just4 u!” with a fuzzy picture of a baby along with body text consisting of the assurance that the advertiser has “everything n any thing u want” [sic] takes the cake for its exhibition of obnoxiousness and general inscrutability. Another less obvious but still awful example is the ad that pops up titled “Writers Wanted” with a portrait of a pretty lady and the bland description, “Get published, build your reputation and your portfolio. Earn 2X industry average.” Talk about inspiring your audience not to click on your ad.

But some of the ads are more effective, and this writer is ready to click on several in particular—the one about the new musical version of Mary Poppins, the one alerting me that Venus Williams is coming this weekend to a local, independent bookstore to sign her book, and the one announcing the “Portable Tap Floor” and promising me the ability to “practice clogging anywhere.” It appears that all three of the advertisers behind these ads use the demographic categories intelligently, capitalizing in interesting ways on my stated love of Mary Poppins, literary interests and listed hobby of clog-dancing.

Facebook advertising continues to experience growing pains, and, according to the Times article, the social-media giant’s business development VP predicts “that the quality of the promotional messages on the site [will] improve as more companies [begin] to use it.” For now, the highest-quality messages stand apart from a slew of mediocre ones, and this fact gives them an incredible edge.

These high-quality advertisers have nothing to lose, and much to gain, because the self-service advertising tool, like Google’s more established Adwords, enables you to pay based on results (in the form of clicks or views) and working within your daily budget limitations.

For example, in creating a Facebook ad campaign for one of Traffic’s online-based B2C clients, the numbers work out as follows: If we target women in the United States and several other countries who list “fashion” as an interest on their Facebook profiles, this specification narrows the ad’s reach within the 500 million-strong social site, dropping it to a manageable and relevant pool of 740,000 users. Based on Facebook’s suggested cost-per-click bid of 57 cents, even if our client allocates just $50 per day to her Facebook advertising budget, there is potential for nearly 100 click-thrus to her company page per day.

Tags: facebook, social media, social media monitoring