Monday, June 06, 2011

'TAG' onto the future of product placement


In a segment aired on Comedy Central earlier this month, host Stephen Colbert observed that the new ability to tag Facebook Pages in photos could transform Facebook into the world's largest agency for product placement advertising.

"Photo taggers could charge companies based on their number of friends and demand top dollar for tags in their most-viewed photos," he says. "Think of all the windfall you could reap from dropping products into your most precious life moments, like weddings, births and funerals."

This shift from 'Likes' to 'Tags' in digital marketing aligns with the industry prediction that Silicon Valley would become the next Madison Avenue. As Facebook and Twitter begin to generate more ad revenue, advertising and marketing will start migrating to the West Coast to take part in the talent pull. The trend also highlights the increasing empowerment brands have to disseminate their own messages, bypassing traditional intermediaries in PR and creating high quality content created specifically for the social web. Accompanied by location-based services, social media will continue to bring about transformation to the online advertising ecosystem - well beyond the traditional banners and media buying-processes.



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