Influx

Whenever a media appears on the horizon, someone comes up with a way to make money out of those eyeballs/viewers and it doesn’t always have the brand’s or the ad industry’s best interests at heart.

Although we are supposedly in a Brand 2.0 world, most of the thinking still seems to come from the C20th industrial age, it doesn’t treat consumers with any respect and has no desire to deliver or provide interaction or engagement.

It’s basically Spam; a mutation of Viagra emails.

Here’s a case.

Some of the most popular applications on Facebook are games.

Since Facebook now has in excess of 100 million users, that’s a lot of eyeballs and and a lot of opportunity to make money.

Many of the games are very addictive, some even generate 60 page views per user/day.

These gamers need points, rewards, favors to make it through the game and to the top of the leader board. This is where the ads come in; in return for taking up an offer, getting a free quote or signing on for a trial subscription, you get “the crack” of those favor points.

In the heat of the game, most gamers are willing to do pretty much anything to get an advantage, even if it means getting a free insurance quote.

For the brands, they are are hardly qualified leads and have nothing to do with engagement.

Nothing to do with 2.0.

Here’s the disconnect, despite all the talk of engagement, conversations, etc in this Brand 2.0 space, most of the efforts still work on the interruption model.

They either disturb consumers at a moment when they don’t want to be disturbed, or they are open to abuse because they offer something of greater value to the user at the moment, than the products or services they provide.

Posted by Ed Cotton