Social Sites Less Friendly to Video Ads

Here’s something that seems to surprise the researchers, but not me:

Social Sites Less Friendly to Video Ads
Content venues,
e-mail yield greater engagement 
Mike Shields
Given social networking sites' challenges with monetization, it's perhaps not surprising that users are less inclined to engage with video ads. Yet sharing video is increasingly becoming a key component of these sites. Ariel Geifman, research analyst at Eyeblaster, said the company was somewhat surprised by their findings.

"What we found is that people browse social networks really quickly," he said. "People spend a lot of time in social networks, but it's not on the same Web page."

The result is that auto-start video ads don't often have a chance to actually start, and that people have few opportunities to stop and linger like they do on content sites.

Download The Eyeblaster PDF

It’s very simple.  Social media sites are not places for advertising. I’ve screamed about this many times. A few shrieks:

5 Reasons Why 90% Of Social Media Efforts Fail

Is roiling ether the best place for advertising?

Snake Oil In Cyberspace
As far as Boomers being tech/web Luddites - I’ve been dispelling that silly myth for years - in my book and blog (Advertising to Baby Boomers, first published in early 2005).

But monetizing social networking sites … well, they still haven’t been able to do that with the Millennial and Gen Y demos. What makes anybody think you can do it with Boomers?
__

Perhaps … it is simply a case of older users being a bit more savvy about marketing ploys, social networking, and the intermixing of the two.

Short or long form (2-20 minute) professionally produced marketing/advertising videos on the web work well. Broadband seems to have been made for them. I talked about this in my book way back in 2005 – you can read that chapter on the Advertising Educational Foundation web site.

More of yours truly repeating himself:

The Most Effective Marketing/Advertising Model For Reaching Baby Boomers: What is now called traditional advertising pushing you to an age-friendly, informative product/services web site.

I’m guessing that this holds true for all age demos.

Add to all this a tweet today from Brad Adgate:

Last year I blogged Mr. Shields on a similar subject:

Social Networks & Banner Ads
As ad budgets shrink, buyers and publishers face growing pressure to prove value of banners …