style & theory: Fashion Marketers + Tumblr

laureni:

Ben Popper over at Betabeat published a story on Betabeat Wednesday titled “The Fashion Industry Wants Tumblr to Get its Fucking Act Together.”

He put together the story based on two complaints Jessica Cogan and Julie Fredrickson had posted on their Tumblrs in response to a…

I think the biggest problem with this whole situation, and indeed social media marketing, is this egalitarian belief that all content is created equal and should be weighted with the same respect. It isn’t, and probably never will be. Years of AdWords, AdSense and targeted display ads have proven ad much. But, now as it starts to come to social, the model gets messier - the product packages are still in their first “let’s throw this against a wall and see what sticks”.

The value proposition being presented with the package partnerships are indeed totally ridiculous, but sadly, I think you’re going to see social media service providers decide explicitly (in this case) or the marketplace (implicitly through bid prices on social media ad products like Promoted Tweets and Like ads) which content is more valuable simply based on which demographic it appeals to.

This has been happening for years on the traditional content side to meet advertiser and business needs - social networks monetizing their own content creators is just another example of this.

The *execution* if this process in SM however, clearly leaves a lot to be desired as what products can be built around these demographic needs is still an open question (see also Twitter’s struggles with an ad model).

But it will be a Wild West of a marketplace until companies can concretely define the value of social and providers can provide products at a fair market value.

(Source: Mashable)