Is advertising on Facebook dead?

Well, not yet. But I do believe it is in the ICU.

A recent Australian legal ruling states simply that Brands are responsible for all comments, even made by visitors / consumers, on the brand's Facebook page.  If similar rulings were passed in other countries, brands would triple-think before spending money on FB ads as the cost and administrative complexity of censoring their pages would be huge. Even more importantly, the free flowing dialogue that brands use FB to create with their customers would itself be in jeopardy.

But that's legal stuff. What I want to talk about is the very concept of advertising on Facebook.

Let me quote the brand's statement in the Australian case I cited above ,''Smirnoff tried to argue that Facebook was an engagement platform, not a marketing communication tool'' (courtesy Socialmediatoday.com). The bold/italics are mine.

EXACTLY my point!

People go on to Facebook to interact with friends. They do not go there hunting for information, or for shopping or for any other commercial reason. Advertising on Facebook is merely like any other ambient media. Like seeing a hoarding while driving, or being accosted by an ad on the baggage tag of an airline. It is nothing more.

So I may just click on some ad that appeared on my Facebook but I did not do so because I was on a social platform.

People go to Google to look for information, to search for articles…they are actively searching. And it is this intent that makes advertising on Google so intuitively more effective.

In fact, what they are searching for is many times answered by some ad. Ads in the Google context can actually benefit the user. And that's why Google is so strict on ensuring that only meaningful ads appear on their sponsored links.

To quote Joseph Perla  on Facebook ads , ''They are worthless. Nobody ever looks at them, and nobody ever clicks on them. I just talked to someone who was trying to promote a book. He found it cost him over $100 in ads to sell one book. Moreover, as you increase your ad spending, people get used to the ads and just ignore them. So, your already low click-through rate plummets even further''

Some will throw the latest comScore data on me. (Some key slides of that report are reproduced below).

comScore used Starbucks as an example of increased in-store purchases.

So, in face of this data, is my point wrong?

NO.

Advertising on hoardings is effective as well. Ads on the backside of buses work too. But we do NOT think of them as the next frontier of advertising do we?

Facebook has 900 million + users and even after deducting the 10% of its users that Facebook itself acknowledges as being dummy ones, you still have a huge 800 mn + user base.

Imagine a magazine that was read by 800 million people regularly. That's what Facebook is, at best. When you advertise in such a magazine, you are never sure whether the reader will look at your ad or respond to it – ditto with Facebook.

So can Facebook create the ''intent'' of commerce as I mentioned earlier?  I don't think it can.

To me it's as simple as the difference between going to a friend's house for a drink and going to a bar. At the bar, I expect liquor brands to advertise and may actually be swayed to try something. If a friend's house was littered with brand logos, I can assure he would become an ex-friend pretty darn quick!

But I do believe that interlinked, cooperative solutions could be a great way forward for internet advertising.

Imagine searching for ''Hotels in Istanbul'' on Google….and you see these suggestion boxes…''Istanbul Hotels your friends rated in Tripadvisor''…''Istanbul Hotels your friends stayed in through Facebook''…''Istanbul Hotels your friends visited on foursquare''…even ''Istanbul hotels your friends tweeted about''

Concerns about online privacy apart, that would be really useful and I can pretty much guarantee I would probably click on a few links presented…..

Are Mr Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Larry Page and Sergey Brin listening?...