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My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

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Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#2
Doesn't work? This feels like revealing Santa Claus to a kid... Sex still sells. Really, really sells. Just how are you measuring advertising effectiveness from which you can say that these ads aren't working?

I guess you do have an interesting point about giving the users more control over the ads they see. This seems to be a semi-hot startup area right now, in case you haven't seen this.

Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#5
"... Since day 1 with Facebook, I've been shocked at how poor the ad quality is. For a company that has a $15B valuation, their ad sales teams plain suck. ..."

How many good advertising/marketing team members are technical & can code? That is a big hiring hurdle that Fb puts in front of new hires.

Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#6
post #4

I've always wondered that. Facebook not to talk about Yahoo know a lot about their users and yet their ads are really lagging behind. Maybe they are being held back by privacy concerns.

I agree entirely. First of, I am just seeing a very limited number of ads on the left hand side of the screen and they are all dating related - kind of disheartening - but this may come from being a young single guy.

Is anyone from different age groups seeing any different ads?

Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#8
post #4

I've always wondered that. Facebook not to talk about Yahoo know a lot about their users and yet their ads are really lagging behind. Maybe they are being held back by privacy concerns.

I agree entirely. First of, I am just seeing a very limited number of ads on the left hand side of the screen and they are all dating related - kind of disheartening - but this may come from being a young single guy. Is anyone from different age groups seeing any different ads?

i sent a message to a friend about moving to boston, and got a boston real estate ad a couple pageviews later. I also get programming job ads (i'm graduating this year). But yeah, there's usually a girl with a come-hither gaze.

Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#9
post #4

I've always wondered that. Facebook not to talk about Yahoo know a lot about their users and yet their ads are really lagging behind. Maybe they are being held back by privacy concerns.

Facebook doesn't target most of their ads the people creating them do. Go log onto facebook, scroll to the bottom click advertise then create an ad.

You can to target region, gender, age, and a few other things(keywords, status, etc).

Re: My Life on Facebook as a Woman and Why Social Network Advertising Doesn't Work

#10
post #3

This post shows that social network advertising doesn't work (for the author), but doesn't say anything about why except to guess that Facebook's sales team sucks.

The sales team probably sell very few of the ads on their outside of the huge corporate branding ones. The ones you see on the side of your profile are mostly paid for and targeted by individuals.
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