As a student you have every right to ask lots of questions to make your life easier – but you’ve got to be specific in order to make it easier for people to answer you appropriately.
Needless to say, the surest way to fail is not to write your essay.

Thanks for the quote.

Pity I’m all the way over here and can’t be there for Nomadic. Maybe we can do a virtual presentation or a skype video Q&A of whats hot and happening over here.

I’m always up for sharing learnings.

lemme know
Uwe

@Anthony: Lol! Obviously I need to step up the calibre of my posting so that it becomes an essential space for your reflection and strategy each day – not all information is equal – hopefully this is a good source!

Interesing stats in, “as few as 4 in 10,000 people (0.04%) who see ads on social networks click on them, compared to 20 in 10,000 (0.2%) across the web” – I can say i am one of those.. I find them increasingly annoying.
Great post though, I really enjoying reading your stuff

This ties in nicely with Stephen Covey’s ‘important’ vs. ‘urgent’ definitions… so often it’s the ‘urgent but not important’ tasks which take up all our time – and the important ones which end up being neglected. There’s so much noise in the online space.

As for those Facebook ads… they are my pet hate at the moment, particularly the flashing ones telling me that I am ‘genuinely’ the 999,999th person to see them. I wonder who their ideal target customer is? Someone very gullible…

I’m all for the sponsorship approach, with brands supporting innovation. It’s not as easy to get right, and it shows a higher level of commitment on the advertiser’s part. It’s more authentic.

With regard to the ‘obvious culprit’: It’s pretty well documented that the ad placements on facebook (the 120×600) are close on the most useless placements available. However the 300×250 within applications on facebook are actually quite effective and experience, at least, about a 10 fold increase in CTR. This is basically down to two factors.

1.) The Skyscraper is poorly placed away from the users field of attention on the page.
2.) The MPU’s are, more often than not, served by the application owner and therefore will be better suited to the audience of that application. (ie. A film application serves film orientated ads.) I’ve recently seen a 5.8% CTR on a fb application placement.

With regard to changing the way we communicate with people: I am seeing a real shift in the way big brands are viewing online ad spend. There is a definitive move from ’shouting’ at users (using standard ad formats), to creating subtle, user enhancing experiences. Whilst it hasn’t got quite to the point where brands are creating tools for users themselves, they are starting to flirt with this idea by moving to a sponsorship model where they can piggy-back innovators by putting up the cash. Whilst we shouldn’t expect banners to disappear overnight, and in fact they still serve a purpose, we can expect that less emphasis will be placed on them as brands become ‘user savvy’.

Doubt this helps with your dilemma of managing your organization, but just my 5c worth.