Understanding social networking interaction is vital for brands

Johnson, a panelist at today’s MediaTel Group ‘Future of Online’ seminar sponsored by Nielsen Online, said: “[Social networking] is new. It’s the fastest growing area but we’re still small. We don’t yet truly understand how people interact with social networks.”

He added: “Our advertising is about engaging with what people are doing on Facebook… we still really need to understand what people are doing so that brands can play a part.”

Johnson revealed that since Facebook’s recent relaunch performance and engagement is “significantly higher”, adding that users are spending an average of 28 minutes a day on the site.

Fellow panelist Richard Parboo, head of agency sales strategy at ITV, said that a big difficulty he had encountered when an executive at MySpace was monetisation, and one of the themes of the morning was making a return on large online audiences.

Also on the panel was Chris Maples, head of sales at MSN UK. He said that although there has been a lot of talk about social networks being different from other media, the “principles of advertising on any medium are the same. The vehicle might be more complex but the basic rules of advertising apply”.

However, Robert Horler, managing director of Diffiniti, said that social networking is different from other media, something that Johnson pointed out when he said that Facebook is at an advantage because it can target consumers based on information in their profiles such as gender and interests. “There’s a massive advantage for advertisers,” he said.

MediaTel Group: 0207 439 7575 http://seminars.mediatelgroup.co.uk