Is that a post? Oh wait, no, it’s an advertisement!
The advent of social media was merely brought about to connect friends, family and coworkers, but today it’s essential part of our lifestyle. It’s not been even two decades, yet we cannot deny the widespread global use has transformed the platform into an advertiser’s dream. It’s not a secret that digital advertisement has played an integral part in almost every marketing campaign in the last few years. The multi-billionaire business has overtaken the newspaper ad-industry with giant leaps, and is growing at a rate fast enough to even leave behind the TV ad-industry soon.
Today, almost every business is making use of social media — some with huge returns, some still figuring out the tools, but it’s impact on the businesses is undeniable. One of the major reasons for the success of the advertisements can be accredited to the highly targeted marketing opportunities provided by the social platforms. Instead of getting a random table-top furniture ad, users are injected with the ads of the product they genuinely might be interested in, or must have shown interest in the past. This leads to a positive flow of interaction between the advertisers and users, providing a satisfactory experience for both the parties.
According to a story from Business Insider, a few months ago, Progressive, an insurance company, campaigned with a video on Facebook featuring an old man who acted like a baby and had to be carried around in a sling. The ad basically urged youngsters to act according to your age, and step up and buy their own insurances. When Facebook employees were having a talk about the campaign in a meeting, David Fisher, the then marketing head, wondered why had he not seen it. And rest chuckled that probably he was too old as Progressive was only trying to appeal to young drivers!
Another important aspect which have led to enhanced user experience has been the improved customer service. Customer service has always been about connecting businesses with customers, and social media facilitates these relationships in a natural manner that’s conducive to timely assistance. Moreover, social media provides a great way to turn the negatives into the positives, and we witness it on a daily basis. To exemplify, on Twitter, Delta Airlines spends around 1.3 million followers, who have constant in-pour of issues and problems. Here, Delta plays the game in its favor, resolving the customers and growing a happy consumer-base. It acts as a great PR play, as by the night, it helps building the brand image.
Going through the history pages, we see that Facebook had introduced ads in the very first years of its existence in the form of Flyers. From that, it moved to a platform providing the companies to sponsor its data from user statuses, and other information like likes and shares. Further, by 2010, we saw the introduction of mobile advertising. Clearly, the digital advertisement had been booming, but the only issue people felt were the overly-powered popups and ugly ads being all over the desktop, or even mobile screens.
I personally believe that oncoming on native advertisement has changed the perspective of advertisements for me. I used to hate ads, I probably still do. But the native injection of the ads into your common feeds, doesn’t bother me enough compared to the constant annoying pop-ups. With all the major media players, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and rather name any, been using native ads into their platforms have smoothed the content we see today. It might be labelled as ‘Sponsored’, or as a recommendation panel. Yet, the power lies in the fact that you can easily scroll through it, without even realizing it to be an unwanted ad sometimes, as the content is already been put up according to your search and internet habits.
Chris Babel of TRUSTe, a firm that provides privacy services says "A site is not one company any more. A site is tens of hundreds of companies all knowing where you are and what you’re looking at.” With the consumers content with the advertisement market catering to their needs, companies and social media still needs to ensure to maintain the perfect balance, and not over-do the potential point where consumers start feeling loss of their privacy.
Bibliography:
http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-social-media-is-changing-advertising-for-better-and-worse/
http://www.businessinsider.com/technology-is-radically-changing-the-advertising-business--and-the-consequences-are-profound-2014-9
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-johansson/how-social-media-has-changed-the-way-that-we-engage-consumers_b_9874242.html
http://mashable.com/2016/09/14/5-ways-social-media-changed-business/#SEKhXIzr8aqH
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/history-facebook-adtips-slideshare#sm.00001ozxhb3okgewdsvkxf05yka88
http://sharethrough.com/nativeadvertising/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising/
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/digital-technology-changed-advertising-rise-fall-ad-man/reputation-matters/article/1392336
