Facebook's "Social Advertising"

Innovative Marketing Scheme, or Threat to Personal Privacy...

This week we've been looking at the social and ethical issues around interactive media and next week we'll examine marketing and eCommerce. This blog post will deal with an issue that falls into both categories. The issue in the news is Facebook's decision to engage in advertising that involves enlisting members as evangelists for brands. Facebook's Beacon feature allows members of Facebook to receive ads that contain the names and photos of their friends who have signed up as fans of the advertiser. According to Facebook,

Engaging with businesses and buying things are part of your everyday life. Advertising doesn't have to be about interrupting what you're doing, but getting the right information about the purchases you make when you want it. We believe we've created a system where ads are more relevant and actually enhance Facebook.

That, of course, is the beauty of targeted ads. When it works, you see ads about things that you care about...and little else. Based on people's online "behavior" advertisers are able to "target" those most likely to be interested in, or in the market for, specific products. The trade-out, of course, is personal privacy.

What Facebook is doing is combining behavioral targeting with Word-of-Mouth marketing. For instance, when a Facebook member named "Sam" declares that he is "friends" with, say, the brand known as Apple, Sam's human friends are notified and Apple gets a "bump" from the implied endorsement. But do Facebook members really want to become public promoters of products that they use? We'll have to wait to see.