Display ads gaining popularity on social networks
(By Tom on 2 September 2009 | Posted in Advertising)
We thought the IAB SmartBrief this morning was quite timely.
It links to a Reuters article reporting the growth of display ads in social networks. The article explains that nearly one-in-five (21.1%, as reported by comScore) display ads seen online in the U.S. are viewed from a social network.
We believe that the vast majority of impressions that comScore is reporting are banner ads made with Flash.
In fact, MySpace is still the top social network in terms of impressions per the report. (Kind of odd, actually, that people are still buying MySpace IMPs.)
But this article was timely to us because Bannerflow has recently ran an advertising test on Facebook, using their CPC ad product. It is fantastic. The targeting is unbelievably effective and after our test, we’ve decided to continue advertising on Facebook.
The only thing that bums us out is that we can’t create a miniature Flash ad for a little additional creativity :(
Here’s our current ad, what do you think?
Do you think that the emergence of well-targeted, effective CPC advertising will affect our business of traditionally Flash-based, broad-reaching online banner ads? We think ‘no’, especially in agreement with our last post — but let us know what you think.