THE TELEGRAPH: The majority of top US brands are using Facebook to promote their products, dispelling the myth that the social networking site is an unattractive environment for advertisers.
According to Facebook, 83 of the top 100 advertising spenders in the US, as ranked by AdAge, the research group, use the site and have signed commercial partnerships.
Brands such as Nike, Coca-Cola and Starbucks, advertise across the site in a variety of ways. Many brands also have their own profile pages which they do not have to pay for and often boast several millions fans. This facilitates a lot of commercial activity on people’s personal pages, often without them thinking of it in that fashion. Starbucks, for instance, has more than 3.7 million fans on its page.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer told the Financial Times: “If you look at people’s profile pages, you’ll see a lot of commercial activity even without advertising.”
The news appears to counter the initial hesitancy many advertisers felts about promoting their brands via the popular social network – for fear of their logos appearing alongside inappropriate or offensive material.
As recently as May this year, Tesco pulled advertising from all Facebook group pages after its adverts were being served alongside groups supporting Holocaust denial and the BNP. The company, and others which suffered a similar experience, such as Vodafone and O2, continued to advertise on the Facebook home page or personal profile pages. >>> Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent | Monday, August 10, 2009
