Some minor issues

On today’s Bizzreport: “Advertisers disappointed with Facebook’s CTR“. So let’s take a look at some ads on facebook (see read more, don’t want to spoil my homepage).

Totally dull, not integrated ads. The first is completely pointless: “you’re the 999,999 visitor, you won!” Come on! Which moron thought he would make a chance with this ad on Facebook? Think about the usebase people, are you really thinking the youngsters and/or advanced internet users present on facebook are gonna fall for this?
Second ad: “Parlez l’anglais?” Why on earth do you think, as an advertiser, you want to speak to me in French (a language I don’t completely master) on an English platform about learning English? Ok, I get this: for the French speaking FB users this might come as a helping hand: if you don’t understand everything you are reading here .. we might be able to help you. But I’m not French, so DON’T show me the ad.

Facebook is an excellent platform. Facebook is an excellent advertising platform. But if advertisers want to improve their CTR, they really have to start thinking and take the users/target group into account. Who cares about CPM if 95% of receivers isn’t on target. And if your CPM targeting sucks, so does your CTR.

I’m not sure, it might exist, but the FB advertising future clearly is/should be contextual. That’s the only model that will work. That’s the only model that will ad value.
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I just bought “The Age of Conversation” online at lulu.com, a website that digitally prints books before they ship them. So no stock and less overhead costs, interesting model. (Although I must say the usability of the store can be improved).

The Age of Conversation is a distributed blogger project. 100 bloggers wrote about the subject, one pagers, which are bundled into this nice book together. Hope it will be delivered before my holiday read break, but I’m afraid not.

There are some excellent bloggers/marketeers/thinkers involved. Some Belgians as well: Kris Hoet, Geert Desager, Luc Debaisieux, ..
Quite frankly I’m a bit jealous I missed this boat I think I would have liked contributing in this project. Not fast enough, so better luck next time.

So all involved: good luck with the sales and promotion. I’ll write a review as soon as I’ve read the book.

BTW: please note by buying this book you’re supporting charity.
- e-book: $9.99 ($7.99 going to charity)
- paperback book: $16.95 ($8.10 to charity)
- hardback book: $29.99 ($8.55 to charity)