The path to classmates wallets

In the second week of September, a congress was held in New York for people interested in advertising on social networks and ideas of interactive campaigns that are being built according to the same principles as they are. The event called Social Ad Summit * was interesting because for the first time only professionals of such a narrow specialization gathered at it. Those who sell piece and inexpensive goods that can bring huge returns, but are still very little in demand in the market.

The founder of Buddy Media ( customers ), Michael Lazerow, who spoke, said that 70% of adolescents and 37% of adult internet users in the United States are covered by social networks. But only 1% of advertising budgets are spent on accessing them through these networks.

Executive Director of Meebo, Martin Green (Martin Green) compared the current state of affairs in this part of the industry with how it was with search engines in the mid-90s. That is, there is an acute shortage of a simple and efficient business model. But gradually comes the understanding that in a place where people come to talk, and advertising should be very interactive.

Buddy Media has gotten a bit of a hand in releasing apps for Facebook. For example, the game RUN-Dezvous , with the help of which the shoe brand New Balance is promoted. In it, the player needs to gain his rivals for a virtual race, the winner of which gets reward points. Points can then be exchanged for discounts when buying a pair of sneakers. The company plans to continue following the path of developing such applications, giving them an increasingly complex mechanism of social connections.
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According to the June report of the Romir research holding, only 42% of active Internet users sometimes pay attention to advertising on social networks. At the same time, 53% do not notice it at all, and 64%, in principle, it is not interesting. 22% turned out to be people who do not want at least something to distract them from communicating with friends and get annoyed because of commercial banners.

I talked with the head of the Media Revolution project, Alexander Gagin, about what steps in online advertising are being taken in Russia.

How strong is advertiser interest in social networks in Russia?

Social networks are in fashion, so they often fall into the lists of those sites that advertisers want to see in media plans. According to the principle “I go there - it means this is a good site.” But agencies can dissuade - traffic from social networks is too fluid, if you look at the ratio of the number of hits to the audience. Is it worth the money that they ask for? According to CPM [ Cost Per Mile - cost 1,000 impressions ] the offer is profitable, but by the response - not so much. Plus, users perceive social networks as personal space and are more annoyed by advertising in them. In general, social networks are relatively new and incomprehensible from the point of view of advertising, so I want to be more careful with them.

How do advertisers in Russia treat social networks - just like another site to hang a banner or are they looking for non-traditional ways to communicate with the audience?

Everyone understands that to improve the effectiveness of advertising in social networks, other approaches are needed - if this is personal space, then the advertising appeal should be, if not personal, then at least contextual. In some cases, this is successful, in others - not very. For example, one of the financial organizations announced its social media campaign as a series of mini-films about life stories. In reality, they presented a series of rather dull animated banners. The idea of ​​sociality was in them, but the implementation was completely non-contextual and non-interactive.

There are good examples. Insurance company "Alfa Insurance" photos on the "Classmates" from low ratings. Or AxeJet club on 24open.ru. This generally seems to be the best case of the season in terms of integrating the advertising strategy with the context of the resource.

* Another Summit achievement was the fact that, in its name, it finally approved the new meaning of the term “social advertising”. And men do not know ...