Social Advertising - beyond better targeting

Search and social networks have transformed the possibilities of advertising. A billboard or TV spot attempts to reach the right people with a scatter gun approach. Google or Bing know all the things a user has searched for and the websites they frequent and social networks contain masses of data about each user. All this data allows advertisers to hit the right people more accurately. 

But the internet also offers more than just better targeting. It also offers the chance to make the commercial completely unique for each person who looks at it. 

Facebook

This week sees the launch of an interactive ad that I directed. It uses your Facebook profile picture and name to make a customised ad for E! Entertainment's Live From the Red Carpet. 

I also directed You Are the Star for HP Laptops in 2010 based on a similar concept. 

Another example was a campaign for Skoda Fabia RS which assessed from your Facebook behaviour how mean you are. I'm the 5077th meanest person in the UK. You were encouraged to involve friends in order to change your ranking.

Twitter

Meanwhile VW analyses your Twitter feed to see which VW is most appropriate for you. It told me there wasn't much useful info there, which is about right. I have never bought a new car and never will. My Twitter feed must have revealed that.

Chrome

The Wilderness Downtown, is an interactive promo for Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait". It was made to demonstrate the strengths of Google's browser Chrome and it takes data integration even further than the examples above. You input the postcode of the place where you were brought up and the video then uses Google Maps and Street View to not only visit that place, but then to animate on top of it. It's aesthetically freer than the other examples.

Pre-social network

Social Ads differ from interactive ads that pre-date social networks in that the video is created automatically from data rather than from the user selecting options to create the video. One of the earliest customised video ads I saw was Ave A Word for the Are You Man Enough for a Mini campaign in 2006 by GlueLondon. This allowed users to create a customised video for a friend in response to a series of questions answered using pull down menus. The resulting video was a personalised message from a heavy who suggested you're mate wasn't man enough for a Mini.