Share and share a Like

Everyday we’re experiencing the internet evolve into a social ecosystem,
one in which people frenetically communicate, logging on every day to share
content and have discussions with friends, families and colleagues.

Even Facebook has observed that the rate its users are sharing
is increasing exponentially. Zuckerberg recently explained that the average
Facebook user is sharing twice as much today as they did a year ago, with four
billion ‘things’ being shared every month. In fact we are sharing over 30
billion things a month across the open web and what this means for advertisers,
is that they have to change their approach to reaching and engaging with these
consumers – but how can they take advantage of this new social media landscape?

It’s possible to harness this sharing phenomenon by understanding that
social connections matter when it comes to online advertising. You can even
improve targeting by building a consumer’s online profile based on what their
friends like too. Facebook has had some success in this area but even its
'Social Graph' has a limit to what it can offer. The next phase in online
advertising is to look at the content that is being shared and apply a
weighting to how frequently and recently it is happening, not just the one
dimension of what consumers are interested in. However, this requires a
significant change in thinking, and turning existing practices on their heads.

Online advertising is no longer about following users around the web,
but becoming part of the conversation and accompanying the user based on their
interests, influence and closest connections.

By creating a bottom up approach, advertisers can turn the sales funnel
upside down, helping them target ever increasing numbers of relevant consumers
by building out the audience based on the interests of just a few. By taking
the fewer connections that are much more meaningful and closer to the consumer,
defining those by the amount of information interaction they are sharing, and
based on this, scaling out those connections by understanding their next
closest connections etc, advertisers can drive a more defined and
socially engaged audience into the customer funnel.

With improved scale and targeting, advertisers will yield better performance and insight from online campaigns. By embracing the new ‘Share Graph’ concept, advertisers can deliver more relevant content to a more receptive audience, achieving higher click through rates and a better return on investment.