Can Facebook, MySpace, YouTube Escape Junk CPM Ad Purgatory?
Can social networks be at once attractive environments for consumers seeking self expression AND safe marketing havens for high CPM brand advertisers? That is the multi-billion dollar Facebook, MySpace and YouTube question.
It is telling that Google sought to assure the non-paying users of its free YouTube video hosting service that its impending in-video ads would NOT interfere with their “right” to no-fee required, unfettered video enjoyment, with the spin that YouTubers control YouTube advertising!
YouTube, Facebook and MySpace have boxed themselves into a “users are in control” at their no-fee, free for all user generated content sites, big, bad dilemna: How can the coddled non-paying users be weaned off of no-advertising-here value propositions in favor of real world ad-supported service models.
YouTube kings Chad & Steve famously touted marketers would NOT be allowed to “mess up” YouTube, even after Google acquire the video sharing site! By conditioning non-paying YouTubers into believing they are entitled to both free services and an ad-free enviornment, Google is hard pressed now to go full steam ahead with lucrative monetization strategies.
What about wild, wild MySpace? Everyone is Tom’s friend AND anything goes: That is why brand advertisers are “scared to death,” as I heard HP’s interactive ad strategist, Mary Bermel discuss at an IAB event last year.
Bermel underscored her reluctance to put money into advertising at MySpace. HP is all about selling product and Bermel cited research indicating that “people involved in social networking tend not to trust products advertised in the social network.” Moreover, people interested in HP products visit the HP site directly or visit review sites, Bermel said.
Bermel mused “Why does HP have to ‘be there’.”
Why indeed? John Trimble, SVP Branded Sales, FOX Interactive Media, countered that MySpace is where the “sizzle” is and sought to put the “best” MySpace face forward, a sanitized one.
Trimble offered that MySpace conveniently offers “protected areas” within MySpace to provide marketers with a “trusted environment.” Trimble cited the MySpace homepage and brand sponsored sections saying there are areas in the site that “are not fully user generated.”
I asked Trimble how his “protected area” brand sales pitch jibes with MySpace’s everyone is Tom’s friend positioning.
After all, if the MySpace rasion d’etre is to promote the unfettered creation of user-generated content, wouldn’t advertisers be missing out on the real MySpace experience if advertising against “non MySpace” content. Moreover, do MySpace friends even visit the “non” MySpace protected areas in MySpace?
Trimble simply reiterated his brand-safe sales pitch in response.
What about Facebook? The self-described “trusted friends” enviornment believes it offers a trusted platform for high quality brand advertisers by definition. Marketers are not in universal social graph agreement, however.
Facebook learned the big lesson of bad adjacency when Vodafone, Virgin Media and other high profile, high quality marketers recentnly pulled their ads from the Zuckerberg social graph to “protect” their brands from appearing on Facebook pages containing content inconsistent with the marketers “values and identity.”
Virgin Media: “We want to advertise on social networks but we have to protect out brand.”
So, CAN Facebook, MySpace, YouTube “protect” high-paying brands and thereby escape Junk CPM ad purgatory? NOT EASILY.
ALSO: Hey Facebook! Free Robert Scoble: Unlock Your 5000 Friend Quota AND Scoble is Right on Facebook: Zuckerberg Stalks All Your Friends