The launch of facebook business solutions introduced us to far more targeted advertising options on the facebook platform. Mark Zuckerberg preached the benefits of socially targeted advertisements on facebook. But the question on the tip of everyones tongue was, "is social targeting going too far?".

Today is noticed a social ad on my profile that is obviously pulling data from someone in my friend network. The ad is promoting a facebook application which happens to have been recently downloaded by one of my friends. The ad actually identifies my friend as part of its content.

Is this going too far? Are facebook going to scare people off by allowing private data to be leveraged (albeit legally) without the average user truly understanding the benefits of socially targeted advertisements?

Or will the much anticipated facebook re-skin address these issues?

The thing is that I have preached the almighty benefit of Search Engine marketing - measurement. Yet I am finding it incredibly hard to get an effective conversion funnel set up. The problem stems from the CMS that my client has chosen.

It is one of those lovely content management systems that does not allocate unique URL's to pages that are part of the online application process that we want visitors to partake in (the desired action).  The measurement tool of choice for this website is Google Analytics.

The good news is that Google analytics (in typical Google style) have anticipated this problem and supplied a fix. The bad news is that the fix requires use of the updated Google Analytics tracking script- you need the ga.js version, not the old urchin.js code. As luck would have it, I can't get direct access to the back end of the site to change the code on the global site template. ARRRRRGHHHH!

So- some tips for those of you that care about understanding the basic principles of online marketing strategy 101.

Define what tactics you will use to:

• Drive visitors to your site
• Motivate them to interact
• Motivate them to recommend your site
• Motivate them to return to your site
  
• Motivate them to take your desired action (conversion)
• Measure the five things above

Once you have these things sorted you can go about choosing your CMS or development approach. It is the grunt work that goes into understanding these bullet points above that will make your website successful, not a CMS.

End rant

These guys had the low down on the hard numbers that proved beyond all doubt that, when purchased on a CPM basis, banner ads quickly become too expensive as a traffic acquisition tactic. More importantly, even when a banner campaign drove an acceptable level of traffic, it was typically very un-targeted traffic that was far less likely to take a specific desired action.

Therefore- banner ads purchased on a CPM basis provide a relatively low ROI when compared to other more targeted online media tactics (SEM, email, affiliate marketing etc...). You can only successfully interrupt people a certain number of people with fancy creative as they read the daily rag online. The ones that you can interrupt and get a click from probably aren't thinking about your product or service.

So what the hell are KFC thinking when they choose to run banner ads on the herald that you cannot click? On one hand I almost admire the fact that by doing this, they seem to have given into the fact that banner ads don't supply a good CTR. On the other hand I'm thinking, they have completely missed the point of online marketing- Engagement.

KFC- the internet is not a big magazine. If by chance I want to interact with your brand via some expensive interruptive media tactic- you had better let me.

Un-clickable banner ads? I just don't get it........?

So as we approach the one year mark its interesting to note the various facebook application strategies. What has been successful? What hasn't been successful? What is the definition of a successful facebook application?

The first sign that facebook applications were definitely something that warranted potential investment had to be the acquisition of the 'Where I've Been' application in August 2007. The simple maps mash-up that allowed facebook users to plot the various places they had visited on a world map was picked up by Trip Advisor for a cool sum of $3 million (USD). At the time this equated to roughly $1.30 per registered user. A benchmark had been set.

On the other side of the coin, we have the interesting case of Scrabulous. A play on the legendary board game scrabble, scrabulous allows users to have an ongoing game of scrabble with each other on the facebook platform. The thing is that the scrabble brand is owned by the global toy manufacturer Hasbro who (unlike Trip Advisor) moved to shut down the popular facebook version of their board game instead of shelling out and taking ownership of some hot online property.

Since then there have been literally thousands of applications built. The facebook application market has been flooded with everything from virtual food throwing apps right through to the wildly popular Texas Hold'em game.

The other day I was stoked to receive a comment from Dave at 500 hats on my post about facebook's monetization strategy. Dave provided a couple of links to some guys that are doing some pretty smart thinking around facebook apps.

One in particular that stood out to me was an in-depth review of why most facebook apps are devloped for fun rather than being developed as utilities that help people do more meaningful things. I found this to be a very interesting read......

What's your opinion on facebook apps? Are they a waste of time? Have you, like me, removed most of them from your profile?

So thanks to everyone who has subscribed (shameless RSS feed plug #2) to my RSS feed and continues to read half-geek, especially given the fact that my posting frequency has been pretty pitiful of late. Seeing my RSS subscriber number tick over into three figures has given me a renewed energy level.

I plan to get back into a more regular posting frequency again. I am fortunate to be part of a very smart group of people at Tribal DDB who are creating some pretty cool digital work. Everything from Search engine marketing to cutting edge flash development. Where possible and appropriate, I plan to start talking about some of the cool stuff we are doing.

Thanks once again for everyones support. Tell your mates!

Funny thing is that I have been so busy at work in 2008 that the issue of page rank has been the last thing on my mind. Many search marketers will suggest that this is a good thing, they say page rank doesn't matter anyway.

But I have to say I was pretty happy when I eventually noticed......

It all started with my noticing some healthy rankings around some reasonably competitive terms like "facebook" and iPhone. The ultimate impact of higher search rankings is obviously higher traffic levels from search.

Has anyone else been feeling some google.co.nz page rank love lately? I'd really like to know the actual date the update happened...

Landing pages should be a crucial component of any online media strategy and they become even more important with a niche SEM campaign using Googles search and contextual network. I want to make sure that the visitors that I acquire via my text advertisement have a seamless experience, landing on a page that is relevant and reflects the message in the advertisement that they just arrived from.

But above all, I want need the visitor to take a specific desired action.

So mulling over all these landing page thoughts has meant that I have been very aware of the various landing pages that I see online in NZ at the moment. I have been clicking away wildly on ads that I would normally ignore, all in the hope that I may pick up some good landing page ideas.

You would think that the likes of say..... Vodafone, with their massive budgets, would be doing some smart landing page work. They are pretty much fully e-commerce enabled, making their online strategy a prime target for a big landing page component.

I recently clicked on a social ad that vodafone are running on facebook (see the ad at left- click to enlarge).

When you think about it, a social ad on facebook targeting pre-pay subscribers and asking them to top-up online is not a bad idea.

Vodafone are likely to be buying this media on a Cost-per-Click basis (or one would hope so) and their new site gives subscribers the ability to pay for a top up online quite easily (I can attest to this).

To make matters even better for Vodafone, I actually need to top-up my prepay card. I am a prime target. I click the ad in anticipation of a super smart landing page experience. This is what I get (click to enlarge):

This landing page is wrong in so many ways. For Christ sake, you asked me if I wanted to top-up my prepay phone! I do, so I am clicking on your ad with the expectation of being able to top-up, but where on the page do I click to do just that?

That big red box that says, "Top up your pre-pay now and receive 20% extra" is not even clickable! Arrrrrrgggghhhh.......

There is actually a link to top up- its in the far right 1-of-3 cell at the bottom right of the screen. The link is too small and its in the worst place. There are like a bazillion links for me to choose from.

A screen with no main site navigation, A nice headline, small body copy, and one big fat red call to action to login and top-up is the answer in this situation.

Vodafone marketing- drop me a line and lets talk landing pages.