Last week saw the long-expected anouncement of Facebook’s new advertising platform call, rather snappily, Facebook Ads. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg thinks that it’s going to change the face of advertising, claiming at the launch:

The next 100 years are going to be different for advertisers starting today. For the last 100 years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation…Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend… a trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.

The initial reaction to Zuckerberg’s pronouncement, or at least the part about recommendations, is one of “no s**t, Sherlock”, but perhaps we should allow him his rather exaggerated enthusiasm; he is only 23 after all.

So, taking a step back from the hype, what does the launch of Facebook Ads actually mean to the world of advertising. Well not a lot actually I would suggest. The main aspect of the new system is one that will allow advertisers to create profiles for their brands which, in much the same way as an individual’s profile, can carry applications, videos & the like, all with the aim of maintaining the consumer’s interest whilst they are on the profile. These consumers can then add themselves as ‘fans’ of that brand, as they would become ‘friends’ with another individual on Facebook.

So far, so much like MySpace, YouTube or any of the other main social giants. The interesting part is the development that Facebook have called Beacon which will track purchases, registrations and other consumer actions on sites outside of Facebook and promote these to the user’s contacts on Facebook.

Say for instance I sign up as a fan of brand x, a bookseller, and then go to their site & buy the new book by Terry Pratchett (hey, I’m a geek, what do you expect?) I will then be notified that brand x would like to add a new story to my profile advertising the fact that I have bought the book. It’s really pretty clever and one that could work very well for certain brands (I’m guessing that not many people will sign up as fans of adult stores for fear of their latest purchases being broadcast to everyone they know).

The big caveat there of course is ‘could work very well for certain brands’. Just as with profiles on MySpace, YouTube or any major social site, advertisers should think very carefully about what they hope to gain, and whether it is really the best place for them to engage with consumers. Whenever we talk to companies about utlising social media marketing we always start by getting them to set-out exactly what they hope to gain and it wil be no different here.

Unless the brand has a real connection with consumers, or a really interesting, engagaing or useful application to make users’ online lives better in some way, then the fact that they’re advertising on Facebook will simply not matter; no one will care. As we’ve said before, we’re pretty certain that the attitude of most consumers online is one of ‘Entertain me or **** off‘ and nothing that Mark Zuckerberg says will change that fact.

As a post-script, it’s interesting to note that as of yesterday the most popular brand on Facebook was reportedly the, very old-media, New York Times with (a rather uninspiring) 1,482 ‘fans’; this now stands at 1,717. And what is one of the most interesting stories on the New York Times website at the moment? How about the one titled ‘Are Facebook’s Social Ads Illegal‘?

I have a feeling that Mark Zuckerberg might yet find that it’s a lot harder to actually change history as opposed to just talking about it.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.