This past week eMarketer slashed advertising revenue forecasts for social networking sites. Facebook’s projections for this year tumbled in steadfast.
While some might “credit” that to the softening economy, the fact remains, online advertising is growing as robustly as ever - surpassing radio, print and broadcast TV - suggesting that social networking revenue woes has something to do with its own shortcomings.
Today I see a story on Digg, one of the cooler sites to spawn from the Web 2.0 / social networking scene but one with very limited advertising upside. The article talks about all of the shortcomings of user-submitted content.
While user-submitted content creates its own problems, user-generated content or user-appropriated content is a whole other bag of problems. My theory, frankly, is that media planners and buyers just can’t be bothered right now.
Take this screen capture for example: it’s CNN’s main page and two of the headlines cast social media sites in awfully precarious light:
- Rape, YouTube;
- MySpace, Suicide…
I don’t even know what the stories are there, but if you’re a media buyer, you run for the hills. Social media has indeed changed communications and media… but when it comes to advertising and marketing, it’s not all that it’s billed up to be.
If you are a media buyer, you don’t lose your job for buying established and safe places… but you do lose your job if your ads appear next to either one of those two land mines.
Yes, the number of people who leave companies to join Facebook grabs the headlines, but more than ever, I am seeing a good number of media professionals turn their backs on the social media hype train and head back to properties that advertisers embrace.
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