Web Strategy Micksup

Fake Social Ads
Originally uploaded by bigmick

Direct-Advertising, where a web page is built just so it gets search click throughs and then has more ads on it, was a highly profitable abomination. It dilutes the value of the Internet and that’s where I work and play so I don’t like it.

Fake social ads are just as bad. “You’ve got a message” or “Someone has a crush on you” changes meaning once it exists inside a social application because it becomes not just annoying, but deceptive. It’s the difference between a flashing ‘fart button’ ad and a ‘Your system is at risk. Clean it?’

I’m surprised that Social Networks like MySpace and Facebook put up with stuff like this, but reality is you can’t moderate 500 million ads. I remember back in the Double Click days how you could bring up all the ads and decide what gets shown. You’d have to have a team of 20 working in shifts to get through it.

The first question maybe is, who really cares? I do because I try and keep the quality high and the bad guys on porn sites. And I know all of my friend/colleagues do (anyone reading this fits in here) because they are in the same area.

But the social networks probably don’t care. They need the money and the better an ad performs the more they can charge per 1,000 impressions.

The users (mostly) don’t. Most of they probably didn’t even know it’s an ad, and a decent chunk probably thought it was cool.

And we know the advertisers don’t care. There is a guy in a room some where thinking about what he can do to get you to click on his ad 0.001% more and he certainly doesn’t care about the social graph, quality volume, ethics or community collaboration.

It’s easy to say “Yeah, that guy sucks.” but if you’re like me and you have to come up with web applications that not only make people excitedly happy and filled with joy every day, but also to make money to pay for servers, wages, and Friday office beers (and sometimes investors yachts, and maybe that’s ‘the’ line?).

So while that guy is pulling any stunt he can to get you to click, people like me (queue the sad music) are working even harder to find out how the actual business model can at worst be fair and reasonable and at best, actually make the product better. I can say without doubt that it’s really hard and models like Overtures ad arbitrage, which is what AdWords is modeled off, don’t come along every day.

But I love the challenge.

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