Lookery.com

Despite all their pageviews – MySpace and Facebook have more then 100 billion a month combined – Social Networks have struggled to attract high paying brand advertisers. As a result, Social Networks measure eCPM’s in pennies, nickels and dimes, compared to CPMs in tens of dollars for high profile, media-friendly sites like CNET, the WSJ or NY Times.

UGC Not Safe for Brands

One of the reasons that Social Networks have struggled to attract higher paying brand advertisers is the unpredictability of user-generated content. Seriously what brand wants to sit next to a picture of Bobby doing something stupid at last weekend’s party or Suzy going on some anti-globalization jihad? As crazy as that sounds – similar bad occurrences have already occurred for instance when a number of ads on Facebook’s UK site appeared on pages of users associated with a neo-nazi group. Talk about poison to an advertiser. The problem is while Facebook and MySpace are rolling out better targeting systems until they can 100% guarantee incidents like the one just cited won’t happen, most brand advertisers will be staying away.

In a sea of UGC, Facebook Applications are the Safe Harbor

The counter to user generated content/profiles is purposefully and professionally programmed/produced content. Programmed content is predictable, often thematic and even sometimes offer context for marketers to target – whether from a content or demograhic perspective. Now the rise of the Facebook application platform, there is a now a wealth of professionally produced, programmed and more importantly predictable content within Facebook.

Not all Facebook applications will meet every advertisers standards, but enough now do to offer a healthy volume of inventory of page views and unique users. Media planners and online marketers can now embrace social networks with a platform without fear of being on the wrong page at the wrong time.

Unlike traditional blind networks, Lookery allows advertisers to screen which applications their advertising will appear on and know for certainty the context of their campaigns. Although this involves some risk to Lookery, we feel strongly that advertisers need to feel comfortable with this new arena if we’re going to turn social network-based advertising into an attractive, strong channel.