There’s been recent press about the ROI validated for advertisers sponsoring web pages in social web environments; personal pages to be exact. In a recent marketing study conducted by Carat Ad agency and Marketing Revolution the value of an ad sponsorship in a social networking space is explored in an article appearing recently in Ad Age. The marketing study measured lift related to four traditional ROI metrics: intent to purchase, positive brand image, intent to recommend and unaided awareness as a result of vendors Adidas and Electronic Arts testing three different MySpace environments. In short the study results proved positive.

Besides exploring the return on branding investments made on users’ personal pages, the study revisits a provocative question as far as branding ROI goes.

The conclusion of the study basically points to the value of spending branding dollars in a viral environment and reaping the rewards of having an entire social network exposed to one’s advertising message over time.

From an IT marketing perspective it makes sense that if it works on the consumer side it should work as well in social web environments on the btob side. Or is this not true because viral marketing and integration with a user’s personal space is more acceptable on the consumer side but might not fly on blogs and wiki’s frequented by serious professionals? Or is the contextual relevancy of what both parties have to say and sell all that matters?

Anyone care to comment? Anyone have any experience with this?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 8:34 am and is filed under Technology marketing, ROI, Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.