Monday, March 8, 2010

Facebook's Foibles

When I first created my Facebook profile a little under 4 years ago, neither I nor anyone else could’ve ever imagined it would come to this. Call it naïve, innocent, shortsighted even, but I never thought that my Facebook interests and information would some day direct what advertisements I saw online. Though maybe I should have.

My intuition to post “Phish” and “The Big Lebowski” as my only 2 interests may have been a subtle harbinger of the advertising juggernaut we see today, an inclination against sharing information that might come back to haunt me (it was most likely due to the fact that I thought I was one witty 18-year-old).

Before I get into the legitimacy of my early Facebook instincts however, I want to talk for a second about the dirty little business known as advertising. As most of us know, advertisers try to convince us we want things that most of us probably don’t even need. Whether by word of mouth, “effective” ad campaigns, or plain reputation, companies brand their products to stand out from a competition that can usually provide the same desired result. Just as a quick example, sitting in my room right now are a box of Nutri-Grain bars and a box of Pop-Tarts. At some point either in my childhood or more recently, I got it in my head that both foods satisfy my on-the-go breakfast needs. Even though other foods can do so just as capably, I stick with these two brands because I’m simply comfortable with what I know.

All boring anecdotes aside, ads that cater to what we know (or at least what they want us to know) are most effective. They don’t want us to think that all breakfast foods or all T-shirts or all flower bouquets will do the job. Instead, they want us to think that only their products can do the job because they match our interests, our knowledge, or our demographic. It follows then that ads don’t exist to meet our needs (apologies for the Marxist rhetoric), but to capture our attention, either emotionally, graphically, or in any other way they can think of.

The more advertisers understand about where that attention lies and how it’s attracted, the better positioned they are to capture it. This explains why Facebook is in many senses an advertiser’s wet dream. Instead of bothering with psychographic surveys and experiments, advertisers now have a tap into all of our emotions and desires. All someone has to do is put Yankees or Giants under his interests and he automatically has an ad linking to StubHub or Ticketmaster for NY sports tickets.

While the formula they’ve concocted seems perfect – especially for us elusive and attractive Millennials – it doesn’t always work out that way. Part of this has to do with people like me who don’t publicize their interests, but an even greater part I’d say has to do with Facebook as a mode of communication. For all of the information advertisers have on their subjects’ interests and feelings, they don’t really have a viable way to reach them. All they have is a small, peripheral picture along with 3 to 4 lines of text, which pales in comparison to the impression of a 30-second televised ad or even full-page print ad.

For the past half-century or so, advertising has been something of a cat and mouse game, an effort to foster a sense of emotional attachment with items that ostensibly have none. While advertisers can know everything about what we like, who we are, and what we do, they can’t always gauge our reactions. The degree to which an advertisement fails to stir our emotions is usually the degree to which it fails as an advertisement.

As consumers we don’t always relate to what’s overt or obvious (like an online poker ad because we list poker under our interests), but sometimes to what’s more subtle and engaging. The reason why comedy is so prevalent in advertising – which has something to do with why online advertising in general hasn’t been successful – is because it communicates a feeling that can’t be captured by a static medium. We don’t want to be hit over the head with simple, blatant, or in some cases downright creepy directives. As with all other art forms, we appreciate the grace it took to capture our attention, and with advertising have the capacity to reward the ones that succeed.

While I don’t know what the future of online advertising will hold, I do know some of its brief history. Little niches have succeeded here and there – like the Wall Street Journal, which serves a finance audience needing news in real time – but most have failed. I don’t think Facebook will fail necessarily, but I don’t think it will turn out to be the advertising haven some expected either.

As much as it’s time to embrace the Internet and social media – particularly for me as an aspiring journalist – it’s also time to be wary of its potential. For now, those fearing the death of television and print media can rest on their laurels knowing that they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Advertisements like this one have proven success for a reason (though this year’s Super Bowl ads might indicate that they might not be successful for much longer).

As sneaky and deceptive as it often is, advertising will always remain more of an art than a science. Lagging behind others that have done so more successfully – journalism, photography, video – it’s an art form that has yet to see a successful online transition. How long that process will take, no one really knows. But there is one thing we do know for sure: because of the ever-increasing number of Internet users, once it comes there will be a lot, a lot of money being made. And all I hope is that I’m on the other end.