hijacked! twitter ads, stupidity vs intellect.

interesting thing landed in my twitterbox this morning. (why did that sound dirty?) @ischafer, of Deep Focus, pointed out this mashable article in which Twittad (...that also sounds dirty) debuted.

Twittad is an online account-auctioning service which functions as the go-between for users looking to monetize their twitter accounts and those willing to buy the impressions of those accounts' followers. skeezy? i'll let you decide. thing of it is, it may smack of familiarity. and it should. since Ian did it for a good cause last May.

but rather than have charity involved, this is just another experiment into how to monetize, cashify, etc the social media sphere (twitter in particular). does that make it worse? some people argued that when discussing adapting the SocialVibe platform to non-charity based advertising, and there may be something to it.

regardless.

there are a few big differences between Twittad's approach and Ian's approach other than the charitable aspect. and this is the heart of the matter:

1. Ian is awesome.
ok. well, that's subjective, but the point is relevant. Ian has a following of cultlike proportions (again perhaps i exaggerate a little). he has things to say that people want to read. he is likable, relevant, and has 700+ followers (as of today; when he did this in May, it was less, but still in the multiple hundreds). he has an understanding of social media to ensure authentic, useful usage of the account during the duration of the sponsorship. and promised 8-10 outbound tweets/day.
...TWITTAD ERROR: it is hard for a sponsor to be sure that the user of the account being purchased is as insightful, conscientious, and influential.

2. his followers have a higher probability of awesome.
you know what you're getting when you buy his space. he has the ears and eyes of many professional elite from the marketing, advertising, and journalism realms, among others i'm sure. you know exactly what target your message is getting sent to and how apt they are to be viewing the advertisement of the sponsor.
...TWITTAD ERROR: if the purchased account's followers are not of a particular target, demographic, or, well, anything, you may risk shouting into the wind; you also are unsure of the level of interaction those followers have with the sponsored account.

3. you are assuming followers give a shit.
as a social media guru, people were interested in Ian's experiment. it was intriguing, charitable, and unique. as Dude A college junior needing $16 for laundry, i'm not sure i care about what you're advertising. moreover, the major downfall of Twittad is that it only gives a profile image (not the usericon). any user of twitter knows that you rarely visit a person's actual profile page. you're busy looking at your feed, often through other second hand apps, like Twhirl. if there are any real impressions to be had, it would be through the usericon.
...TWITTAD ERROR: fail, for the aforementioned reason. almost nobody goes to a person's profile page. unless it's a new follower you may want to follow back. or a funny profile you sometimes click to but don't actually follow, like @chucknorris or @FakeSarahPalin.

---

so in short, Ian did it first, did it better. then again, many of the selling twitter accounts are going for pretty cheap. is this more of a get-what-you-pay-for mentality? banner ads 2.0 anybody?

the socialcash monstrosity. cashify baby.

right on the heels of Facebook's leap forward (previous post, ability to vote up/down on advertisements users see) is this monstrosity called SocialCash.

"What that means, is that users are given the option to earn stuff in return for completing offers -- like applying for credit cards, getting information about vacation rentals, receiving free trials of magazines, or finding out their credit score. The offers subsidize the reward (like, say, an iPod Touch or an XBox 360) and the developer gets a cut."

so wait, wait--let me get this right.
i click stupid advertisements, fill them out and pretend to like them, and instead of paying me, you give me branded products. yeah, cos that sounds revolutionary. or like a banner ad in and of itself: "click me and a win a free ipod!" yeah thanx no.

i don't want to sign up for credit cards, give out information to third parties via banner ads, or learn more about vacation rentals i won't use, just so i can have a chance at an ipod. no value there. this won't work.

when i said users should be involved with their advertisements, i said in the ads selection. "paying me off" taking time to do shit i don't want to do for stuff i don't want when i could be playing with facebook apps (talking beneath me, here, but you get the idea) is not my idea of a good time.

the only reason socialvibe works with perks is because a) i don't have to DO anything -- the badge stays on my page. b) the information i share is with socialvibe only, or may be shared with my sponsor/charity of choice. c) i go into it knowing that i'm not doing it for the perks, i'm doing it for charity, so if i don't get a $20 gift certificate, i'm not going to be cranky.

but if i fill out hundreds of stupid banner ads or pop up offers or what have you and don't see anything for it--except for lots of credit card bills well then i'm still going to have to go with a HELL NO. this is not RELEVANT. REMEMBER to be relevant when dealing with a teen market! you are not important to them unless you're doing something they already want to do. newsflash: they don't already want to fill out for vacation rental deals. they're sixteen.

"The Gratis concept works for two reasons: 1. people love free stuff, and 2. in order to get the stuff, users must invite a certain number of users who also complete the program (the number varies based on the value of the reward). So the customer pool grows virally and exponentially."

...stop calling it viral. it makes you look bad. < /peeve >

"Clearly, the viral spread didn't work"--anyone else find that sentence funny twofold?

i have advertising thoughts.

so, after having the luck to engage in an interesting conversation with Ian Schafer, a very smart man, yesterday via Twitter, i decided to delve deeper into the advertising thoughts i initially considered in "huge tracks of land."

i asked what he thought of socialvibe and its implications, after reading something written in Adweek (wish i knew what it was, the link is gone now). he felt skeptical because it gives incentives for a given behavior, but felt that the fact socialvibe benefited charities may even it out. i replied that i liked it because it enabled users to choose what their profiles support, giving street cred to the ads.

he argued this would be problematic if all users were allowed to select their own advertising, because some advertisers wouldn't be selected, and users would inevitably support 'prom king' brands. which, naturally, has a lot of merit. because it's true.

but, nevertheless, the concept i'm talking about would only apply to a user's specific profile--not the apps page, or the main page, or 'common areas' owned by more than one person (ie, events or groups). in that way, less popular folks could still get the word out on the same platform, while making advertising more relevant on personal spaces. agreeing in theory, examples he offered were like nascar or skate decks.

i then asked him if he thought incentive was a bad thing to offer users, since it is the users who bring value (data) to the networks. after all, if the users weren't valuable, advertisers wouldn't be up in arms trying to sort out how to reach them effectively, and there wouldn't be such a bid on Facebook's ownership. and guess what? kids are starting to realize this. i wish i had the Facebook link, but kids were responding saying they wanted money for their data being used. i was floored.

in comparison to giving up cash flow, what's wrong with perk compensation for choice advertisements? ian replied saying that, "playing devil's advocate, isn't using a service for free compensation enough for seeing ads?" initially, i say, yes, by far it's compensation enough, even on a place like Twitter, where i'm not giving out a lot of data value. but on Facebook or Myspace? it seems the perfect way to solve the ad-relevance problem.

+ let users choose the ads their profile page sponsors.
[on social media sites in which the users offer up a lot of personal information, like Facebook and Myspace]
- give them the option of using socialvibe in its place.
[so that if they should want, they can donate to charity through their ads. not all users will opt for this, though, since i doubt socialvibe could host the multitude of sponsors kids will want, and i doubt those multitude of sponsors all want to donate to charity.]
+ use the socialvibe method for incentives
[each day the ad is up, you get 1 Entry. on a given day, there are drawings for incentives that support the user's chosen sponsor. IE, a $20 gift certificate to PacSun for those whose ads are for PacSun. this promotes brand value at the same time as not too much monetary loss. this also fosters elitism and competition, which also adds brand value.]
+ in this way, social space advertising becomes relevant
[if the ad reflects my friend's interests, i'm going to be equally as interested in his or her brand choices as their music choices. we show our sponsors on our tee shirts, from brands to clothing companies to coca cola; showing our preferences on our profiles will only add to this level of sharing. in fact, limiting the amount of sponsors a profile can have will become necessary, likely only 1-3. this increases response rate to advertisements. it also makes users feel like a worthwhile part of the cycle, rather than having ads be something purely ignored.]

these are my current advertising thoughts with regards to social media networks.
i'm already a walking advertisement. i'm supporting my socialvibe charity as i type this in my TWLOHA shirt while wearing matching MAC eyemakeup. why not capitalize on these tendencies and harness them to make advertising more useful without being more intrusive?

huge... tracks of land. yeah.

can i get another "duh" and "i was right" in this corner? kthanx.

adrants picked up a piece on SocialVibe which--guess what? makes social networking ads more relevant by appealing to peoples' ACTUAL interests.

effin' novel, i tell you. bloody hell. finally. "huge tracks of land" aside, awesome way to advertise, and even better that it's linked to charities. that gets a huge KUDOS from Riot. in fact, i'm going to go implement it. so there.

next step? have user-chosen ads REPLACE non-chosen ad placement on user-interfaced social media sites like Facebook, Myspace.