Thoughts about the future of advertising on social networks: How can it be integrated successfully and unintrusively?

I have always liked to view my facebook profile in spatial terms. Sort of like a living room cause that’s the one room in ones’ house where his guests spend most of their time. Ok so  it’s sort of like your living room with a door that is open to the street. That door is either half open for by passers that want to take a peek or fully open for your acquaintances. Now advertisers want to enter this space and hang next to the personal photos you have up your wall, a painting you love or the video you want your friends to see a big-ass advertising banner.

Now let’s think under what circumstances people my actually want to have this done to their living room. First of all, I personally don’t want any big-ass advertising banner in my living room because I can’t think of a single brand, person or message that has such that much significance in my life. Plus my girlfriend would kill me if I had something up the wall that dwarfed that photo of us in a trip to Venice, a photo that I didn’t want taken anyway. Some people however do feel this way about some things be it Obama prior to election, Madonna, a photo of their car or whatever other marketed item they feel plays such a big role in their life.

There should be some sort of boxed space on the screen that allows the profile owner to personally choose what sort of advertising they want on their main profile page. For example I like Madonna, give me a selection of 100 cool images of her and let me choose which one I want to be displayed in my profile (plz allow me to download and keep some afterwards). Now give me the option to display underneath that picture a personal message e.g. ‘Theo+Madonna=L.F.E’, and also the option to display when her next concert near my country of residence will be, and whether I will be attending or not. Similar thing with my new Ford Kuga. A picture of myself with the car that is hyperlinked to my album of pictures/ videos I have shot with my car. Etc. For the aforementioned reason it would also be important to let the user choose how big they want this thing to be.

I imagine that this might also be possible in terms of branded tagging by the user him\herself. For example I put up a picture of me holding my baby, I could tag the clothes it is wearing with the brand ‘e.g. Diesel kids’ which in turn could be hyperlinked to the page of the Diesel online catalogue where that product might be found or I could also state its price, comments about what I think about it, where I bought it from and why someone should visit that particular store. If I am out taking a stroll with it in a pram I could tag the pram.  Of course tagging is work and work might require payment. It is a big question how much such work should be paid but one thing is certain, that it must be paid according to how influential that person is. For example a highschool’s gang of cool kids is very influential as they act as role models for a lot of their schoolmates. The cool gang always has the coolest accessory, device, clothes first. Indeed they also make it the coolest.

It doesn’t always need to be paid however. I might love the brand, its products or parallel causes they try to advance (e.g. environmentalism) so much that I might actually want to show my sympathy by promoting them myself (and in turn helping the environment). How it is possible to love a marketed thing so much is another story however.

Perhaps it would also be possible to expand the information about oneself in Facebook with questions such as: who is your dentist, what car do you drive, favourite brand of clothes, favourite restaurant etc

This article is a response to the questioned posed by Lisa Duddington in the cScape customer engagement forum. View the discussion here.

So what do you think? Do practices such as the above stand a chance? Do you think the individual that is the profile owner must actually want the advertising to be placed in his profile in order for it to be truly unobstrusive and successful?