Big-name brands booking ads on Facebook

Not only are they booking ads but these ads are being targeted to users based on information in their profile.

In theory, with users posting a broad array of personal information on their profile pages, including age, sex and hobbies, social networks provide an opportunity to reach very precise demographic groups.

Does this make anyone else feel less than comfortable? Oh and you just have to love this:

And this week, Visa, the world’s largest credit card processor, said it will invest $2 million in advertising on Facebook and introduce social-networking applications for small businesses to help them find new customers.

So if you suddenly start hearing from your local small businesses for the first time ever you will know why.

The following graf points to the real problem that I have with this approach to advertizing:

The problem is that big companies are used to traditional ways of advertising that generate online traffic and page views, which doesn’t apply to social networks where people “want to socialize as opposed to look for information,” said Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.

People use these sites for social networking, the currency is each other whereas the more traditional sites trade on information. I’ve come to accept advertising with my information but not with personal relationships.

There is an aesthetic problem as well, the whole business just seems incredibly ugly and parasitic, with company’s trying to con their way into the affections of their potential customers by appearing to be something they are not e.g. concerned and ‘just like them’. The only thing that they are concerned about is bottom line which is fine but I wish that they would stop this constant moral equivalent of astroturfing. As for ‘just like them’ hardly, they ought to call this pretend empathy marketing.

I have been involved with the web and marketing for a long time and this is the first large scale commercial use of the medium that has made me feel really queasy. Of course the problem could be that I’m getting old and set in my ways. Maybe a drug company will search me out via my Facebook profile and sell me an ethical flexibility drug to sooth my troubled mind.