It's not surprising to hear that the social-networking generation prefers to choose their own marketing messages rather than receive random banner ads from marketers. A study of more than 1,200 kids
ages 9 to 17 and about 1,000 parents across the country, finds that many consumers enjoy playing with ad-related features of their choosing on their personal profile pages.
These
findings are "likely to fuel a push by digital ad agencies to get marketers to experiment with new ways to advertise on social-networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace." So-called "widgets",
downloadable software programs that can display anything from animated graphics, videos, photo, sharing, music or live chats, could become the ad wave of the future.
Indeed, if
consumers have to accept advertising in exchange for free Web content, why not let them choose their advertiser? The phenomenon could usher in a whole new era of interactive, performance-based
advertising, letting consumers "digg" their favorite ads by either voting on them or posting ad widgets to their social-networking profiles. This also fits in with the findings of the Alloy study,
which found that today's consumers do not want random advertising on their profile pages.
Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »