The Monkey Shack

There are now over 500 million social-network users, each generating 1,200 page views per month and representing roughly 600 billion monthly opportunities for an ad impression. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other, up from 56% just one year ago. I spoke with a co-worker yesterday who mentioned he didn't consider himself an expert in social marketing. My reply was that we better become one, quickly. Marketers have to get on board with social now, and those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.

One route for marketers into the social networking market is through the use of widgets, small applications that can be embedded in web or mobile content, adding to the user’s experience without, more often than not, being overly and blatantly commercial. Widgets and applications first became popular with MySpace members who use them to embelish their profile pages. Then Facebook began to allow developers to create widgets for their members. Other sites, such as PhotoBucket, provide HTML codes that can easily be embedded in blogs and social sites.

Marketers have since turned these into opportunities to provide contextual interaction with consumers. Southwest Airlines' "Ding" widget was downloaded over 2 million times in its first year, generating 10 million clicks in the third quarter of 2008 alone. The App Store for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices that launched in July today has over 10,000 applications. In fact, the current tally of the most popular Apple iPhone applications shows that consumers are willing to pay nominally for games and entertainment and that there are broad opportunities for advertisers.

Widgets and applications have replaced key fobs and branded coffee mugs as new-age digital swag. They provide an opportunity for marketers to reach consumers in an unobtrusive, even helpful way that turns passive, low-level conscious awareness of a brand into active engagement and advocacy. Relatively inexpensive to develop and distribute, free to the user, and easy to share with friends and contacts, they provide a direct link between consumer and brand and carry an advertising message with them wherever they go. Yet, marketers will spend a relatively paltry $100 million on these applications this year, roughly equating the total media buys during the upcoming Super Bowl.

Some applications certainly have inherent limitations. Development meetings will argue over entertainment and utility much in the same way creative directors do over traditional advertising concepts, searching for ways to briefly get users attention and then start over when that attention fades. People have long hated marketing for being intrusive, obnoxiously misleading, and irrelevant. Yet intelligently designed applications combine utility with the brand's stated purpose. Instead of trying to lure customers into your store, take your store to your customer wherever they may be.