Facebook's subtle advertising

posted on 20th August 2007 by Nick

Well well well.

To begin with Facebook started off as a social community website where users could upload photo’s of themselves. It started off with very little advertising. However recently, we’ve seen more advertising appear throughout the website.

Now being 21 myself, I have officially caught the Facebook/Myspace bug. I started off with myspace, but unfortunately the level of immaturity on that site can be enough to drive anyone away. Not only do they have a very young community, but another factor that drove me towards facebook was the fact there was minimal advertising. However, I logged in today to be greeted with a very cunning advertisement: instead of a regular banner-advert with images etc, they’ve cleverly placed a “sponsored” article in the newsfeed.

It reads:

Become a quicker athlete with Nike Zoom. Sponsored
Watch Luol Deng prove that quick is deadly as he beats a defender to the hoop. Then train to be quicker yourself.

Now, maybe this has been done before and I just wasn’t aware of it - but methinks it’s a tad sneaky of them to put any items in there that are not related to one of my friends or myself.

Clever marketing plot for Facebook? Or a complete step in the wrong direction?

Let’s hope they don’t go all out, and keep the advertising to a minimum.