Hasta La Creative!

I love buying a round of virtual drinks for my friends. What better way to show them I care without having to deal with all the drunken aftermath (I did what?! I made out with who?!). But as I pass out the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters and Tiki Revenges to my new BFFs, I often find myself asking “How are these people/companies making money off this?” Well, when it comes to more conventional ad forms, it turns out they’re not. With click-through rates around .04%, advertisers have been less than excited about the returns. As it turns out, people really are there to interact with each other. Who knew?! Applications, though, are another story. At first blush the numbers are impressive: 874,742,856 installs across 17,263 applications on Facebook with these applications being used 34,175,797 times in the last 24 hours generating numbers like $300 per active user. But then you come across articles like this where the value of a Facebook application user is valuated at somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.40. Hmmmm That’s a big discrepancy. Digging a little deeper we discover that the bulk of application usage is spread out over a handful of applications — only around 87 according to this article. Doh! Looks like Facebook isn’t a quick path to riches and that advertisers will actually have to put effort into developing messaging, applications, etc. that have true value for their audience. Bartender? Can you make that next Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster a double?

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