Comments on: Hey Mark…Where Are The Ads?

By: Are Friendfeed Ads On The Way? | CenterNetworks

Are Friendfeed Ads On The Way? | CenterNetworks — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:07:22 +0000

[...] stream, you have to believe that Twitter and Facebook won’t be far behind. Last week I asked Mark Zuckerberg why he allows Facebook users to use desktop tools without ads. centernetwork257:http://www.centernetworks.com/friendfeed-ads [...]

By: Rob Nelson (guruvan)

Rob Nelson (guruvan) — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:01:00 +0000

Allen,

I totally agree with what you’re driving at here. And I totally think that the application developers are missing out on a huge monetization strategy. I think that Facebook is going to have to rethink at least one of the developer rules as it relates to the stream (or let the loophole that I can imagine slide through).

Ads on the desktop client are something we might view as desirable if they’re done tastefully and give us back some benefit. The thing about the desktop clients like PeopleBrowsr, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic is that they allow for direct targeting of the ads. This is likely to result in higher clickthroughs and much higher conversions. I posted about this on Monday this week: http://guruvan.gurus.net/techbiz/thars-gold-thar-streams

I don’t know that it’s really Facebook’s decision that there are no ads in these desktop clients. As I read it only one suggestion in my post (discounts for posting a Wall Story) are disallowed by Facebook’s developer rules. I still think that the opportunity for individual, behavioral targeting via multi-network clients is immense.

And Jeff, The power users are actually likely to be the ones who click on the actually targeted ads first. Show me an ad that speaks directly to me, and has exactly what I want, and I’ll click on it. You may be correct that the casual users are the ones to click on the average current Facebook ads, like the ones for the stupid IQ quizzes. But those aren’t targeted. If they were, I would NEVER see them.

By: Jeff Hester

Jeff Hester — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:38:48 +0000

Ads? We don’t need no stinkin’ ads…

Facebook, Twitter, et. al. want to encourage their power users to stick around because they generate 80% of the content. Inversely, it’s the casual users who are most likely to use the web to interact (not the desktop app) and are also more likely to click on the ads (power users ignore them). So give the power users a nice, clean, ad-free environment to do their power-user thing in, and show ads to the casual (i.e. lazy) users who are more inclined to click on adverts anyway. It’s a win for everyone, and just maybe why ads on the desktop client don’t really matter.