Finally, some good monetization ideas for Facebook
Summary: In this post, I cover two monetization options that have been suggested for Facebook, one from Bob Garfield at Advertising Age and one from Adam at Seer Interactive.
I was gratified to read two pieces today that actually proffered feasible ideas for how Facebook can live up to its own hype.
The first, Your Data with Destiny by Advertising Age’s Bob Garfield, is long—and worth it. En route to his suggestion to Zuckerberg, Garfield travels through the decline of traditional media and how the advertising value proposition has transitioned:
- away from exchanging attention to ad messages in return for access to free or subsidized media
- towards exchanging consumer data in return for entertainment, information, discount or utility.
Of course, the new marketing paradigm doesn’t stop at data provision. Mining and analyzing the data, and using it to extrapolate a consumer’s likes and dislikes—that’s where the future is. More specifically, it’s in finding out the true indicators of purchase intent, because they sure aren’t obvious:
In 2006 Tacoda did a project for Panasonic in which it scrutinized the online behavior of millions of internet users — not a sample of 1,200 subjects to project a result against the whole population within a statistical margin of error; this was actual millions. Then it broke down that population’s surfing behavior according to 400-some criteria: media choices, last site visited, search terms, etc. It then ranked all of those behaviors according to correlation with flat-screen-TV purchase.
In that list, “shopping online for flat-panel TVs” ranked 22nd — 18 places below “consumed ‘Miami travel’ content.” Miami travel?
“Not Chicago travel,” Morgan says. “Not Europe travel. Not business travel. Don’t ask me why. But here’s the incredible thing: No. 1 — and significantly above the others — was people looking at military content. It made no sense. Then I talked to a friend of mine who had been an officer in the first Iraq war. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘That’s easy. The kids in the military are huge video-gamers. They get big, fat signing bonuses, and their housing is free. They don’t need cars. So they buy big TVs.’”
Garfield’s extensive exploration of the history and progress of marketing (and there’s a lot more in said exploration, including a trip to Israel) ultimately led to his plea to Zuckerberg:
Dude, blessed as you are with the megaphenomenon called Facebook, why are you just another popular utility in search of a business model? Could it be that you’re fixated on the notion that your revenue must come from typical advertising? Haven’t we agreed that advertising is problematic, because users are suspicious of it, resent it and employ every means to avoid it? Yes, we have. Yet the same people 1) love goods and services; 2) crave information; and 3) are so fabulously self-involved that they display every last detail about themselves, their tastes, their preferences, their favorites, their hobbies, their embarrassing drunken photos, their damn near everything right on your site.
So why in the world do you not have a big honking box on the bottom of every Facebook page titled “What You’ll Like” or “YouStuff” or “The Mirror” with a category-by-category selection of books, music, films, videos, news articles, websites, tennis gear, shoes, power tools, specialty foods, flea and tick protection, you name it?
Not advertising. Capitalizing on the unlimited collaborative filtering made possible by Facebook’s oceans of data. I like it.
The other post, Facebook is Stealing Your Hard-Earned Rankings by Adam at Seer Interactive, is along similar lines: FB has the opportunity to become the Web’s ultimate affiliate marketer, thanks to its amazing progression through the SERP ranks:
Searches for Victoria?s Secret, Nike Shoes, Vodka, and Coldplay bring back Facebook as the 28th, 30th, 51st, and 28th result respectively. While ankings 30th isn?t impressive, the fact remains that Facebook isn?t trying and they were also not ranking AT ALL a few days ago. It?s hard to know when Google started indexing because these weren?t on anyone?s radar at position #452, but being at #28 definitely raises a brow to how far these could move.
Savvy Adam spots the business opportunity:
A few businesses have been able to capitalize like Rhapsody, iTunes and Amazon. They are taking advantage of iLike pages that are beginning to show up (System of a Down ranks 53) by having favorite songs downloadable through the band homepage… So if you?re able to download songs, buy shoes, and purchase lingerie from links on these pages, what is stopping Facebook from becoming the largest affiliate marketer on the web?
Both of these articles have something in common, and it’s something that I’ve been seeing for some time as core to future success on the Web. If your offering doesn’t work in with what your customer is already doing, they will resent you. If your offering enhances what your customer is already doing, they will love you. This is why text ads work better on Google than anywhere else—because they enhance what the customer is already doing.
What is your customer doing? How can your product or service enhance it?
