Len Devanna offers over 17 years of digital innovation experience at Fortune 500 brands. He helps companies with all aspects of their digital ecosystem, including online strategy, engagement marketing, and social brand management.
There's been much written about Facebooks ad announcement. Erick Schonfeld did a nice job livebloging from the event. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out... The obvious risk is that users are driven away by in-your-face advertising with the inevitable 60pt blinking text, auto-play audio clips, etc.
More likely though, I see legions of brand loyal consumers propagating the message to their finely targeted prospects, err, I mean friends. I spent some time with Greg Selkoe, creator of Karmaloop.com some time back. These folks had built a small army of brand supporters - a team of people who would promote through email, IM, MySpace, etc;. In return, Karmaloop offered certain percs - be it featured designs, discounts, visibility through the eCom storefront, etc;. It was masterful... By far the most effective social advertising I'd seen to date.
I believe similar will play out on Facebook. Look at some of the partners who have already signed up - Coca-Cola, Verizon, Sony, Blockbuster, CBS... I see Coke (as example) offering percs to consumers who rally around their brand. Perhaps product discounts, special 'insider' widgets, cool 'members only' avatars, etc; - And all the user has to do to take advantage is acknowledge their support of the Coca-Cola brand. It's word of mouth / peer pressure advertising at it's best. Equally as interesting will be watching how far companies are willing to e-recruit their legions of free advertisers.
The game changes, yet again.
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