Socialize your ads

Social networks are here to stay. Today, about 37 percent of adult Internet users and 70 percent of teens online use social networking sites. Usage is expected to increase to 50 percent and 84 percent respectively by 2011.⁴

To take advantage of these growing trends, here are some tips on reaching potential customers by targeting social network sites:

Get to know your audience

There are a couple important things to know about how people interact with social network sites.

1. They share information about themselves including age, gender, and activities. Knowing this information about your potential customers can help you target your ads to the right demographic.
2. They stay longer on social network sites than most sites.⁵ Since users tend to spend more time on social network sites, try creating a click-to-play video ad or gadget ad that will allow them to interact with your ad while staying on their favorite site.

Find your target audience

1. You can target your ads so they appear on specific social network sites with placement targeting. You can also target individual sections of a social networking site that are especially relevant to the audience you're trying to target, such as the MySpace music or movies section.


2. Some social network sites have demographic information about their users, and you can use Google's demographic bidding feature to reach these audiences by age and gender. This can be used with a placement- or keyword-targeted campaign. See a list of sites that are currently available for demographic bidding.

Examples of general sites you can target:

MySpace · Facebook · Friendster · LinkedIn · MiGente.com · Blackplanet.com

Examples of niche sites to target:

MyYearbook· Xanga.com · Flixster · imeem · Gaia Online

[4] eMarketer, "Social Network Marketing: Ad Spending and Usage," December 2007
[5] Hitwise, "Hitwise U.S. Report: The Impact of Social Networking," March 2008