• Adweek, Monday, December 8, 2008 12:01 PM

"Brands in general have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing," Adweek's Brain Morrissey claims. Banner ads, in particular, have been known to perform poorly on the social networking site, but the Facebook Platform, which lets third-party developers create applications for users, was supposed to change all that, offering marketers the ability to engage consumers with their brands. However, so far, apps from Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are about as popular "as desolate Second Life islands," Morrissey says.

Nevertheless, Mike Murphy, Facebook's VP of global sales, defends the tactic: "We find that if a brand builds an application as their social strategy and not as a tactic that contributes to their overall strategy, then more than likely they won't see good results," he said.

Experts note other reasons why so many branded apps have fallen flat. Some are too complicated, others provide little in the way of interactivity, and still others are "overly branded." Indeed, most branded apps are often "little more than ads," Morrissey says, adding that most are developed as one-off experiments, leaving developers with little room for tinkering.

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