
My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work  - jmorin007
http://www.centernetworks.com/social-network-advertising
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attack
Doesn't work? This feels like revealing Santa Claus to a kid... Sex still
sells. Really, really sells. Just how are you measuring advertising
effectiveness from which you can say that these ads aren't working?

I guess you do have an interesting point about giving the users more control
over the ads they see. This seems to be a semi-hot startup area right now, in
case you haven't seen this.

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budu3
I've always wondered that. Facebook not to talk about Yahoo know a lot about
their users and yet their ads are really lagging behind. Maybe they are being
held back by privacy concerns.

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dangoldin
I agree entirely. First of, I am just seeing a very limited number of ads on
the left hand side of the screen and they are all dating related - kind of
disheartening - but this may come from being a young single guy.

Is anyone from different age groups seeing any different ads?

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lg
i sent a message to a friend about moving to boston, and got a boston real
estate ad a couple pageviews later. I also get programming job ads (i'm
graduating this year). But yeah, there's usually a girl with a come-hither
gaze.

~~~
dangoldin
Hmm, so there is something more advanced that my dormant self isn't getting -
definitely interesting!

Unfortunately, there is no way to write a facebook app to capture the
displayed ads - but I think it would be possible with a firefox plug in...

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bdr
This post shows that social network advertising doesn't work (for the author),
but doesn't say anything about _why_ except to guess that Facebook's sales
team sucks.

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sanswork
The sales team probably sell very few of the ads on their outside of the huge
corporate branding ones. The ones you see on the side of your profile are
mostly paid for and targeted by individuals.

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bootload
_"... Since day 1 with Facebook, I've been shocked at how poor the ad quality
is. For a company that has a $15B valuation, their ad sales teams plain suck.
..."_

How many good advertising/marketing team members are technical & can code?
That is a big hiring hurdle that Fb puts in front of new hires.

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vesterr
Why do you even look at ads?

<http://adblockplus.org/>

~~~
9oliYQjP
By default, I block ads. If I find the site to be useful (the litmus test is
"will I return?") then I unblock the ads. Why do I do this? There are far too
many digg/reddit link whores that for all intents and purposes add no value to
the Internet, but have tricked me into clicking on their links. The sites that
are linked usually repackage somebody else's work into their template, and
have manipulated the system into getting people to click on their links. In
some cases, it is flat out copyright infringement. And if you load the ads on
their page, they have won. In fact, they'd probably use the ad revenue to help
legally defend themselves if the original authors of the content they copied
were to sue them. It's quite despicable and that's why I can reconcile
blocking ads. Like I said, I unblock ads on websites that I find useful.

If you find a website useful, I think it is much better to act in good faith
and put up with the ads. If the ads bother you, then try to find an
alternative website for that purpose, or contact the authors and present your
dilemma. Perhaps they will offer a subscription service sans advertisements,
or tone the existing ads down a notch.

