DISQUS

Social Times: Is Social Over-Hyped?

  • dominic · 1 year ago
    Here are a couple of thoughts..

    One pb is that hyper targeting currently means hypertargeting the user (i.e a genre, a zip code) not a community. The issue on advertising are the issue of behavioral targeting not those of social targeting.

    For me social hypertargeted advertising does not equate behavioral and social search and hypertargeted advertising are two aspects of the same issues.

    My theory: we're moving from a world where people were publishing towards universal audience (the web) towards a world where people publish towards communities ( spread in multiple infrastructures).

    Within communities people use "codes" to discriminate who's in and who's not. Can be style, icons, shared references, language register.

    This goes way beyond keywords.

    Unless technology and an entire infrastructure comes up that discover and expose these codes, style and register along with advertising platforms that allow targeting against them, there will not be any social search nor social hypertargeted advertising.

    On our end, we've done experiment in social hypertargeted advertising and what we find difficult is to "engineer" landing page that match the social ads. But the results are quite interesting.

    So, I think the opportunity will be realized, but there is still a long way to go.
  • GVP · 1 year ago
    Click through rates are currently horrendous on the sites that offer hyper-targeted advertising.

    Again, what are we comparing this to? Search? CTR on social media sites are never going to be as good as search or even blogs. MySpace shows like 6 ads / page. Why is CTR important in that case? Shouldn't we be tracking conversions instead? 2% CTR with 100% conversions is much better than 1% CTR with 50% conversions, seems like these are important numbers.

    The reported ROI on TV advertising is 18%. How does that compare to Social Advertising? Isn't TV a more valid basis for comparison than blogs and search?

    At least give us a supporting comparison to prove that you're not just spouting media rhetoric.
  • Liz · 1 year ago
    I'm frankly surprised (but pleased) to see these doubts about the hype surrounding social media voiced on a blog called "Social Times". I think it is healthy that you can take an objective, if opinionated, view of the field and not be a cheerleader like some other forums have become.

    I'm not in the PR or marketing industries but the level of hype seems almost overwhelming at times and I imagine it must be really annoying to the "old guard" who established themselves when the media landscape was quite different.

    I think what we're seeing are people who are in the process of creating a field in which they are experts. I'm not saying that social media wouldn't exist if there wasn't social media consultants, it's just part of the process of creating a new industry to loudly boast of its crucial importance, how it is being overlooked, what great opportunities exist, etc. These experts aren't just selling their expertise, they are selling the notion that social media is THE up and coming field that everyone needs to pay attention to now or else they will miss out, big time.

    It seems almost ideological at times and it shouldn't be a surprise that consultants are often called evangelists or gurus. You just have to decide for yourself whether it is safe to drink the Kool-Aid.
  • Ari Herzog · 1 year ago
    Not proven? Of course the notion of "social shopping" is proven: Have you never done anything because your friend(s) suggested it? Have you never eaten at a restaurant solely because someone you trust told you it serves the best burger? What about reading a book or visiting a website or trying on a mink coat because of a certain friend's or family member's recommendation?

    You can even look at sites like amazon.com and cnet.com, and if you see enough favorable reviews for X product even if you don't know that person you are very likely to buy the product.

    No?