Facebook Turns the ‘Like’ Into Its Newest Ad
via AdAge >>

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — The ubiquitous “like” is currency for brands, and Facebook is giving them a new way to collect: an ad unit that shows up on the right-hand side of the screen it calls “sponsored stories.”

The unit will give brand-related action such as a “like” or a check-in a lot more visibility on Facebook by adding them to an ad unit in addition to users’ news feeds.

For example, if Starbucks buys a “sponsored story” ad, the status of a user’s friends who check into or “like” Starbucks will run twice: once in the user’s news feed, and again as a paid ad for Starbucks. Though clearly marked with the words “sponsored story,” the ad — which will includes a user’s name, just like the news feed — is not optional for Facebook users.

Great comments are below the article, too:

I see a lot of brute force in all of these advertising “experiments” from Facebook lately, and not much finesse. And I think the user experience is suffering. I find it harder and harder to know where anything is in FB, and that should be a cause for concern for them. Facebook WAS the clean, safe alternative to MySpace. The more convoluted and cluttered it gets, the more room opens up for someone to come in and supplant them with a better UI.

- Jeff Greenhouse

 and this:

Facebook – WAKE UP!!!

Monetizing the “Like” feature for Facebook enhances advertisers’ paid messages but it also pisses off Facebook users and diminishes the experience….

The more Facebook gets plastered with conventional ads, taking advantage of it’s users engagement, the more it will look like a NASCAR sponsored vehicle driving away active engagement and participation.

Rodney Mason, CMO www.moosylvania.com

 and this:

Facebook has brought upon the downfall of the advertising effectiveness of social media.

Bill Starr, CEO mylifelist.org

and also:

Let’s see how long it takes for one of these advertisers to get sued by someone who figures they should be paid a TALENT fee. If they publish an ad with your photo (not to mention your name and your words), seems like you should be paid — unless you signed a release form saying you work for free!

bbbbird

..to the thoughtful:

It’s very interesting to see that in a peer-to-peer medium where brands have no natural place, brands still very much pursue a brand approach. 

Call me crazy, but why not focus on value between peer-to-peer rather than interceding that relationship with in attempts for a brand-to-peer or peer-to-brand-to-peer relationship. After all, being human does seem to work.

Best regards,
@josippetrusa

and:

The time really is ripe for a Facebook alternative now isn’t it? 

FB has made risky moves before (news feeds for one) and proved it was the right thing to do, but I’d fear that this blatantly tells their members that they’re tracking their actions for demographic business needs. Not that people aren’t aware of this to some extent, but a company should be careful in how obvious they’re monitoring their members. No one likes to feel like they’re being spied on, or that every move and action is being recorded and watched.

- pancakes

Here’s another one, and it is again from Walmart. I do shop other places, but Walmart seems to have the most agregious examples (or the ones worth photographing, anyway).

The poor girl on this Faded Glory poster has dark circles under her eyes, dark enough to look like fading bruises from a black eye. It would gave taken a graphic designer a few minutes to ease or erase them. Instead, they’ve let this tired face fill a 4-foot tall display.

It probably would have helped if she looked happy, too.

The scene: night. A man drives his new Cadillac SRX on a scenic road far from town.

Suddenly, his new Cadillac stops for no apparent reason in the middle of a bridge. A bright light illuminates the car from directly above.

Its electronics go haywire. Doors open and close. Seats and storage bins open and close of their accord. Lights flash.

The light overhead fades away, appearing to release the Cadillac and its driver from their paralysis, and they continue on their way (probably high-tailing it home).

Shelves of portable hard drives.

But Walmart’s branding has failed. The Walmart “splat” logo icon is near the top of the display, and I think they’re relying on the icon alone to reinforce the Walmart brand.

Here’s why: Instead of using one of the stock phrases about savings (or even better, a custom phrase about technology savings) their designers decided to use this advertising for a line about taxes.

Huh? What do these hard drives have to do with taxes? Nothing. I even looked more closely to see if there was some kind package deal — buy a hard drive, get free tax software, or something like that. Nothing. Nada.

So instead of reinforcing the savings brand image, Walmart is confusing people.

(If Western Digital has seen this, they probably aren’t too happy either. I hope.)