Five reasons why Facebook Ads is a bad idea

By the time you’re reading this post, Facebook would have undergone a huge transformation – from a social networking site to a social media cum advertising network. But then, if you have a user base of around 50 million active users, this kind of transformation is always around the corner.

Now, you must have read a lot of blogs and sites stating that Facebook can be the best target for advertisers, the click through rate will be high, blah, blah, blah. But I’m sorry to say – I differ from all of them. I personally think advertising on Facebook could be a bad idea. It could even be going the MySpace way – from a neatly designed social networking site to a spam-filled site which has ads by the dozen. Why, you ask me? Allow me to present my reasons.

1. Facebook is a social networking site meant primarily for students. Agreed, it has opened up to everyone now, but a majority of their user base is still students. So, as an advertiser, you cannot target them as they don’t have a regular disposable income.
2. The click through rate (CTR) of Facebook is just around 0.04%, the kind of stat you don’t want to see as an advertiser.
3. As of now, Facebook’s biggest strength is its spam-free, neat design which makes for a great networking tool. In fact, this is what separates Facebook from MySpace and other networking sites. By placing ads in there, Facebook could lose its USP and become just another social networking site.
4. The majority of Facebook users are university students, who are intelligent enough to not get sucked up by dozens of ads that pop up from the screen – a fact which is clear from their click through rate.
5. Last but not least, I, as a Facebook member, do not want advertisers to know about my likes, dislikes, preferences, and other things, at least not without my consent. If someone wants to know my personal info, they should get my permission. If I feel there is something valuable that the advertiser can offer me by knowing my personal info, I might think of giving him that. But, you just can’t expect people to say yes to advertisers using their personal info whichever way they want.

So, ladies and gentlemen – this is why I think Facebook ads is not so great an idea as it seems to be. I know a lot of you might agree with me and a lot of you would disagree with me, hell, some of you would even want to flame me. You’re welcome to do all that. Just go to the comments section and do whatever you want.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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