Ian On The Red Dot

When it is an advertisement! I saw Estee’s post on ‘Why I LOVE BOYS with BALLS and … a good set of wheels‘ and I found it interesting. Parts of the post sounded a lot like ad copy. So just to test, I took the phrase ‘They amaze us with their skills, humble us with their rootedness‘ and googled it. These are the results. Check this site out.

Learning this brought up a whole mix of thoughts and feelings. I have nothing against ads on blogs. Bloggers have the right to want to monetize their blog. I have nothing against endorsements also. Celebrities do it all the time when they go onto TV and say how wonderful a particular product or service is. Bloggers should be given the right to do so too on their blog.

The thing is that when it comes to blogs, we tend to expect (and possibly unfairly) that bloggers should always speak with their own voice - endorsements or not. While Estee did inject her own voice into the post, a part of it wasn’t hers. Which begs the question - next time, when do we know if it is really Estee speaking?

Should Ad copy be separated?

To be fair, Estee did put a disclaimer in the post title with the letters ‘ADV’ in brackets. And she probably isn’t the only blogger involved in this campaign by Nike.
Another thing that I’m still not sure about is how to feel about bloggers putting ad links within a post. Looking at the link information to Nike’s site, you can tell that Nuffnang is the ad provider.

One reason why ‘Pay Per Post‘ has raised the irk of certain bloggers in the States is because the medium makes it hard to differentiate between genuine show of support versus paid endorsements. In TV, it is easy. We can tell that a segment is an advertisement. Product placements within shows are easy to spot. Advertisements occur before a movie. In magazines, it used to be easier, but now with increasing number of advertorials, it is getting harder. Blogs started out as personal diaries but its use is evolving. I think the nature of the birth of the medium is one reason why some of us feel strongly against the invasion of paid posts. It is like inviting a friend to your house or visiting a friend for a party and they only reason why they want you there is so that they can try to sell you some multi-level product which you don’t really need so that they can make money.

On a final note, I do hope Estee forgives me for using her blog post as a reference point for my thoughts on this issue. And in no way am I insinuating that Estee has been dishonest. She did put a disclaimer as I have mentioned above.

allfacebook shares Facebook will be launching their new ad system.  This will be the next step after the improvement made with Facebook Flyers which has been argued by ReadWriteWeb that it might not be something Google should be too worried about.  Valleywag talks about Google’s ad system being about servicing expressed intent, while Facebook’s is to service latent intent if not create intent.

What would Facebook’s new ad system look like?  These are my thoughts.

1.  They target you based on your preferences.

With the information entered onto your profile page, they already know a fair bit
about you.  Advertisers can already use Facebook Flyers for what looks like highly
targeted advertising based on preferences which could be revealing latent intent..

2.  They know your relationships.

How does the social graph help in advertising?  It can be used to infer behavior,
intentions and preferences.  How?

Say I have a friend who puts that his interest is rock climbing.  He is connected to
a lot of people whose interests are also rock climbing.  One of his friends has not
put rock climbing as an interest.  Basically, this friend has not bothered with
putting much information on the profile page.  Now, this friend and the one who
likes rock climbing have common friends where a significant percentage of them are a
subset of those who do like rock climbing.  Facebook could infer that this friend
also is into rock climbing.

How about behavior?  This can be inferred by the events you get invited to.  Say
friend A gets invited for lots of events.  They fall into two categories - tech
conferences and clubbing.  But my friend only invites me for clubbing events.  My
friend probably would do so because he as a friend knows I find tech conferences
boring with the lack of hot babes (although I am going to try to score brownie
points by saying Singapore females geeks are HOT ).  So this relationship and how
my friend and I interact using Facebook has revealed important information that can
be used for targeting.

So maybe on a Wednesday morning I might not have any plans yet.  But Facebook knows from the invites that I have been accepting from my friends that I tend to go for clubbing on Fridays but not on a Wednesday.  But what if there is a really good deal for a Wednesday clubbing event?  Or say that it is a Friday morning.  The intent to go clubbing that night is already there.  Why not target it?  Facebook would have the information to allow advertisers to do so.

3.  They already know who the influencers are.

Who are the ones who pass on messages?  Who are the ones who consistently invite
people?  Who are the ones who share stuff?  Facebook already knows that.  More
critically, who are the ones who get their invites accepted?  Who are the ones who
get clickthrus on what they share?  Also, who are the ones who share new stuff as opposed to who are the ones that just pass on stuff.  Now based on relationships and interaction between people, Facebook might be able to deduce who are the innovators or early adopters.
It won’t be too hard to imagine that targeting the influencers and innovators/early adopters with a well constructed message will probably help advertisers achieve better results.

Well, Facebook’s social graph can help provide that information for that extra edge in targeting.

4.  They already know the statistics about the different demographics.

Granted not the whole world is on Facebook, but the number on it is pretty big.  I don’t think it would be too presumptuous to say that major political decisions have probably been made polling less people.  So Facebook is able to establish profiles of different demographics.  What could they possible do with that information?

a.

Sell the aggregated information without revealing individual details to marketing people.

b.

Use that information to target ads off Facebook.  Put a code on your website and tell Facebook what your website is about.  Facebook could use information on your website to deduce the possible profiles of your visitors.  Based on the demographic of the visitors to your site, Facebook could use the aggregated information about the different demographics to know what sort of ads your visitors might most likely be interested in.  They serve relevant ads based on that information.

5.  They know what people are currently interested in.

Related to what people currently put on their profiles, the events they go to, the groups they join and what people share, Facebook will also be able to understand what is the currently hot trend or topic.

Possibly more interesting is when individuals change their profiles.  What is removed?  What is added?  Does this change happen just at the individual level or is it happening across groups of friends?  Across networks?  Across demographics?

Facebook is a data miner’s dream.

On the last page of the Money section in today’s Straits Times is a report titled ‘ New ZapCode billboard a hit with shoppers’. Many thoughts came to mind when I read this report. The first was that this sounded a lot like an advertisement.

ZapCode is a 2D barcode technology that is being promoted by SPH NewMedia for advertising purposes. So when the newspaper printed by SPH says that ZapCodes are a hit with shoppers, I would take the claim with a lot more than a pinch of salt.

Some of the details in the report make me wonder if ZapCode is really such a hit. A billboard with a ZapCode has resulted in more than 1200 responses. Let’s be generous and say there were 1300 responses. These responses were received from 168 different mobile phones. This means, on average, each phone sent 8 messages ( I rounded the number upwards ). It has been about 3 weeks since the end of last month, so to be generous, each phone zapped the code 3 times in a week.

I’m not sure if each code was for a different piece of information. Apparently, there is a weekly lucky draw which people who zap the code are entered. Does zapping the same code increase your chance of winning? The report does not mention it and I haven’t had a chance to see the code yet. Does anyone know if within a week the code changes or the information changes? Does anyone know if zapping the code more increases your chances of winning in the lucky draw. I think this is important in ascertaining if ZapCode is indeed a hit. It is important because not all interaction with consumers are equal. Consumers may just be interacting with the code to win prizes without any care for the brand advertising.

And the number. 168 different mobile phones. I would believe that the Midpoint Orchard mall is a heavily trafficked area. To get 168 mobile phones zapping the codes seems to me like a small number.

So here is the thing. Is ZapCode really a hit with shoppers? Or is Straits Times disguising advertising as reporting to build hype about their own product?

Please share your views.