Social Ads

The Social Graph

During the roll out of what Facebook call their ‘F8 platform ‘ in November 2007, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the changes represented a completely new way of advertising online through the introduction of ‘Social Ads’.  This, he suggested, was because the new advertising service would include advertisers in the community ’social graph’ in a way that traditional advertising did not.

For example, look at the very simple diagram showing the relationship of four Facebook community members:

I am in one Facebook group with Mr. B, and another, different, group with Mr. D. The nature of the Facebook community means, therefore, that all of their information will be freely passed to me, and, similarly, my information will be passed back to both of them.
Mr. B. also receives similar information from Ms. C, and inevitably some of that information will then be passed on to me. From there, it is reasonable to assume that the information will reach Mr. D and so on and so forth.

This is a very simple example of the ’social graph’ that Facebook see as being of fundamental importance to their ‘F8 platform’, which is effectively the latest version of the Facebook site and system.  And, what they are suggesting with the launch of ‘Social Ads’ is that both the advertiser and the person to whom they are advertising will be part of this same social network.

Thus it is that ‘Social Ads’ will be presented either as a part of a user’s News Feed in the form of sponsored content or alternatively integrated into the ad space that appears on the left hand side of the site.  Furthermore, the reason that these adverts are called ‘Social Ads’ in the first place is that instead of random advertiser messages appearing in your News Feed, for example, the way the software behind ‘Social Ads’ operates means that the ads that appear do so alongside related actions your friends have taken on the site.

Because they are presented in this particular way, the idea behind ‘Social Ads’ is that they will enable your business to become part of people’s daily conversations.  This is the reason why your advertising can appear either in the left hand Ad Space, where it will be visible to users as they browse Facebook to try to connect with their friends, or as a constituent part of the News Feed service, where it will be attached to and served in the context of relevant social stories.

So, what advantages do Facebook claim that they would have over other similar PPC advertising business models such as Google AdWords?

Firstly, Facebook claim that it is advantageous to all community members that both the members who are advertising, and the people who are being advertised to are all Facebook community people.  Facebook are therefore suggesting that this fact should make the viewer of any advertising material far more open and amenable to the message that the advertising contains.

The second and far more critical factor about Facebook ‘Social Ads’ is that, whilst a service like AdWords can, for example, allow an advertisers to target a particular type of customer, ‘Social Ads’ are able to go considerably further.  These adverts allow you to target your potential customer far more accurately, by sex, political persuasion, age and other social factors, in addition to being targeted by geographical location as well.