I have read Alex Joshi’s blog “Location Based What!?” the other day and completely felt the same way. The idea of promoting to individual likes and dislikes as we would say in facebook talk nowadays, is a genius idea. However the concept behind it is extremely poorly developed. The advertisements don’t appeal to users because they appear in a style that does not trigger people’s interest. As Alex said they are simply annoying. Nevertheless we remember them because our sub conscious is being exposed to it everyday and eventually gets used to it. But I don’t think that negative attitudes towards a product, even though the advertisement seems to be effective in a particular way, are any good for a company’s reputation.
To me it doesn’t make sense why facebook and its partners are not able to do a better job in their promotion. There are good examples out there. Google’s search engine not only generates desired search outcomes but also offers alternatives. Searching for a particular product triggers thousands of results related to your personal search criteria. The google sidebar effectively promotes ads that might catch the searcher’s interest by offering different solutions.
Companies should reconsider their online marketing strategies and make more efficient use of tools that already exist.