11.18.08
P&G Says Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook
CINCINNATI (AdAge.com) - Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them, said Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., at a forum on digital media.
“I have a reaction to that as a consumer advocate and an advertiser,” he said. “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”
Just two extracts from a great article “P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook” on Ad Age yesterday. He says there is a growing feeling from consumers that social advertising is “hijacking conversations” in their current format.
This, amongst others, was one of the primary reasons that Facebook (and a few other networks) had its interface revamp a few months ago. The advertising elements are now more integrated to the general experience rather than standing out like a sore thumb.
Much like the concept of using AdSense for monetisation. If you integrate the colours and make it look more like part of the content on your page, the higher the chance of a click.
McConnell further continues with a very accurate statement IMO
Consumer Generated Media: Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.
Of all media it is true that marketers jump on any opportunity to get more face-value and interaction from their demographic audience. We do it in Magazines, TV (thank goodness for PVR that let’s you fast forward through adverts!), search engines and social networks, blogs etc.
One the one hand that is the pure definition of marketing - on the other - I have often had conversations with people that feel that SEOs saturate the engines with irrelevant content. For example, quite simply put, if you have a website and you do not apply SEO tactics, the chances of your site appearing Top 10 is slim to none. Even if you have the most relevant content compared to the ones appearing on Top 10. You are competing with other SEOs for eyeballs (market share). This has obviously a factor that has also influeced the way in which we search…(more keywords to narrow down results. ‘pages from your country only’ etc.) But that is a convo for another day 
Back to topic: From our experience FB flyers do work well - depending on the product and how it is targeted. In some instances more niche targetting results in higher conversions, in others, the broader the better. But applications still seem to get two thumbs up. Well those that have a functional purpose at least. The only problem with applications (in the SA market at least) is that they are quite expensive to your average SME. And in my opinion they work most effectively in multi-channel campaigns: online-offline-online. But second to that combined with a robust online campaign. (network-website-online.advertising)
Elements such as FB flyers do make social advertising much more accessible to the SMEs though, it is still much cheaper than running a PPC campaign - IF your target market is present on the platform of course…
‘Spray and pray’ is a little harder to do when you’re under economic pressure. Ted McConnell
Return on Investment (ROI), or “bang for your buck” is what it is all about at the end of the day. I have always been very result oriented, and try to *encourage spending CPC (cost per click) rather than CPM (cost per million impressions). This way it is performance driven - so you are guaranteed to see results on your campaign.
(* This does depend on the campaign though. A good reason to adopt the CMP model is if it is for brand awareness purposes for example, and then also very carefully defined.)