Can marketers really socialize with social marketing?

Whenever a new form of media is introduced to the public, it is only a matter of time before marketers consume the outlet with floods of advertisements. Just six months ago Google was offering Youtube 1.6 billion dollars for ownership, and of course there would be an advertisement strategy involved in the purchase. But with new ways to advertise on these sites, new viral ways, is it really acceptable to the public.

Let us take the very popular College Humor website, visited daily by prankster college students, or others just looking for a good laugh. The site is filled with hilarious pictures of college peers, witty editorial articles relating with the students, and the much visited daily videos . I have to admit, I am, and have been for a few years now, a huge fan of the social media based site. I visit nearly once (if not more) a day and at least check out all of the videos which provide me with a great laugh.

Recently, however, I have found something rather intrusive, something that serves as quite an annoyance for me. College humor has started to place advertisements around the boarder of several videos I try to watch, encompassing the entire outside of the video space, and usually plastered with logos. I would link the site of this advertising, but they appear randomly when you watch the videos, so I urge you to watch several of them to see for yourself.

Now, I am by no means a advertising critic, and rarely do I complain about the amount/intrusiveness of advertisements in my life. But I too have lines that can be crossed.

To start with, I go to this site not only to watch the videos, but also to read the clever commentary that is paired with the video. Its like they give you something to look for while watching. But with the addition of these "frame-advertisements," The commentary text is completely cut off, and I have to instantly close out of the advertisement to read the content. By then, I have seen the video, miss the joke, and am ticked off.

Secondly, the first time I saw this type of advertisement I was very confused and thrown off. While watching a video of a student streaking across campus all my attention was focused on the giant Kraft label that surrounded the video. Initially, since I had never seen these advertisements, I thought Kraft was sponsoring the video, and in fact performing the stunt (or at least encouraging it). As I continued to watch, confused, I thought to myself,"this is some bad publicity for Kraft."

So all in all, its no surprise to me that advertisers will be "invading" social media networks, nor do I wish them not to. But in order to be successful at doing so, I rec commend several points. First, don't cover up important information on the site that visitors depend on, your ad will be closed immediately, and if it does stay open, consumers will be aggravated not with the site, but your brand (gives them a face to blame). Secondly, be careful who your "unintentional" sponsors/partners are. If your company deals with preventing fires, make sure you don't advertise on a site like College Humor where your logo and company will be surrounding a video of pyro-maniacs.

I have come to accept this frame advertising, and in fact enjoy its efforts of being less intruding on visitors. But there are some minor changes that need to be done in order to generate success from them.

For more information, check out Ad Weeks related article with Google & Youtube.