ChasNote

In an interview with Justin Smith at InsideFacebook we got talking about advertising formats that are best suited to social media environments, and I proposed that previous media revolutions — like radio and TV — offer instructive analogies:

“[If you take] a look at radio (the internet of our grandparents’ day), people listened to news clips and radio plays. If you go back and listen to advertising during radio plays, the ad is a mini version of a radio play. You didn’t get a blinking light on your radio or something that created cognitive dissonance. And when things moved onto television, the ad didn’t contain two guys sitting around microphones doing radio plays — commercials changed as well. They got beautiful people, got a good soundtrack, and took advantage of all the visuals.

“If you bring that forward to social network environments, it’s largely about the conversation. As a Facebook user, I have a relationship with a couple hundred people, and my News Feed is where the conversations between my friends and me are happening. Marketers can’t just come in there and insert a radio play and hope that you will pay attention. The format that we’re engaging in is an online conversation, and the advertiser that wants to be a part of that needs to mimic what users are doing: join the conversation, not throw in a banner ad that disrupts that experience.”

Thanks for the ink, Justin!