Social Ads: what's old is new again

Joshua Porter has an excellent post up analyzing  Why Social Ads Don’t Work.

...What if the activity you’re doing actually does determine your willingness to click on ads? This is what is being suggested by the early returns on ads in social networks. If this is so, then we can start by making a list of activities in which it would make sense that people are most susceptible.

    * Searching
    * Shopping
    * Traveling

These activities all share something in common. People are on the move, and are actively looking for products and services to help them along their way.There is a reason why Google wants super short time-per-visit and Facebook wants super long time-per-visit. It’s because the services support two completely different activities. Google wants a tremendous number of incredibly short visits. Facebook wants people to never leave.

But a fundamental problem with the way that MySpace and Facebook have been looking at their audiences is that they think their audiences exist to make them money through the sharing of attention. They believe since they have so much attention (super long time-on-site) that they should have no problem doing so. But it is the very reason why they have long time-on-site that makes them bad for advertising. They have provided a comfortable third place…people are already where they want to be!

Social network audiences are less like searchers and more like homebodies.

It's fascinating to see the same pattern playing out in today's social networks as we saw with chatrooms in the late 90's. Highly interactive social spaces don't generate high click-through rates, 'cause people are there to engage with each other. HOWEVER -- activities that enhance relationships (e.g. digital gifts, lightweight social games) can generate lots of interest in social spaces.

I'll bet that the more that social ads look like relationship-enhancing activities, the better they'll do.