it is no longer relying solely on what Facebook users reveal about themselves. Instead, it is tapping into outside sources of data to learn even more about them — and to sell ads that are more finely targeted to them.
The push to refine targeted advertising reflects the company’s need to increase its revenue. Its shares are worth far less than its ambitious initial public offering price of $38 a share last May, and Wall Street wants to see it take concrete steps to prove to advertisers that it can show the right promotions to the right users and turn them into customers.
Last fall, it invited potential advertisers to provide the e-mail addresses of their customers; Facebook then found those customers among its users and showed them ads on behalf of the brands.
Targeted advertising bears important implications for consumers. It could mean seeing advertisements based not just on what they “like” on Facebook, but on what they eat for breakfast, whether they buy khakis or jeans and whether they are more likely to give their wives roses or tulips on their wedding anniversary. It means that even things people don’t reveal on Facebook may be discovered from their online and offline proclivities.
consumers are more trusting of content they can find on their own terms, rather than that which is pushed out to them by brands.
Looking solely at US respondents, only 15% trust social media marketing, 12% information about companies on mobile applications, 10% ads on websites, and 9% text messages from companies or brands.
Consumers display far more trust in what Forrester tabs “self-selected digital pull content.”
“TV and video content providers such as cable companies have a great opportunity to target heavy users with social TV in order to reduce potential churn,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner. “The time to take advantage of this opportunity is right now as social TV services have not yet been dominated by a single solution and the market is far from saturated.”
Connected TV will open up access to a much wider range of content via the Internet, opening the possibility of worldwide video sharing.
ideo influences consumers the most when considering a purchase – up more than 20 percent – banner and search advertising continue to decline. Less than 50 percent now find paid search influential when making a decision, down from about 60 percent during the past three years.
550 businesses with less than 100 employees in the U.S. and found that only 3 percent of their total advertising dollars flowed online, compared to as much as 16 percent for big companies.
most of these business do not have a professional marketing person whose job is to drive marketing," Rose said. "It's pretty hard for them to winnow their way through the 20 to 40 unsolicited requests they get a month to use digital marketing product A versus digital marketing product B."
According to The Social Times and VentureBeat article, Sephora’s Pinterest followers spend, on average, 15 times more on Sephora products than the company’s Facebook fans.
I'm a social media marketing strategist and a social TV writer/explorer. I read and archive a lot of articles and blog posts in both these categories, as well as B2B marketing.