As much as we'd all like to see less advertisements in our daily lives, ads are here to stay. Not all ads are created equal, though; if advertising is well targeted it can almost be bearable.
Recently we asked you which social network displays the best ads, with "best" meaning "most accurate, interesting and engaging." Although many readers answered that all social networks tend to serve equally annoying ads, there was one social network that fared noticeably better than the others: Facebook.
I've noticed the same thing. While MySpace and most other social networks use Google ads, those ads seem to be completely irrelevant most of the time. A recent analysis by Pali Research's Rich Greenfield pointed to the issue; while I don't particularly like the choice of keywords he had used in his research (who in their right mind searches for first names only on a social network such as MySpace?), I agree with his conclusion. [img src="http://sale-online.click/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/facebookad.gif" caption="" credit="" alt=""] In fact, enter anything in that MySpace search box and the ads served will almost always be badly targeted and unengaging.
Facebook, however, has chosen a different approach. By using a visually unobtrusive ad box on the left hand side on the screen they manage to catch your eye much easier than any of Google's standard AdSense formats, which are all over the place on MySpace, for example. Furthermore, their advertising platform enables them to tie the advertising to your friends' activity and interests. And finally - this is only a personal observation, but obviously one that is shared by many of our readers - their ads seem to be much more relevant than the ads on other social networks.