Advertising in Social Networks - Success or Failure??

Here is an interesting article about Social Networks and Advertising. Although many companies try very hard to use the different Social Networks like MySpace, Facebook or StudiVz (in Germany) for their advertising, only few of them really succeed with their approach.

"The truth about online ads is that precious few people actually click on them. And the percentage of people who respond to common "banner ads," the ubiquitous interactive posters that run in fixed places on sites, is shrinking steadily. The so-called click-through rate for those ads on major Web destinations such as Yahoo! (YHOO ), Microsoft (MSFT ), and AOL (TWX ) declined from 0.75% to 0.27% during 2006, according to Eyeblaster, a New York-based online ad serving and monitoring firm. It says that last March the average click rate on standard banner ads across the whole Web was 0.2%. This reflects a surge in new ads and Web pages, fueled by the rise in social networks."

In my opinion your success with these kinds of methods depends on your subtlety and your brand. If you only use aggressive advertising, you probably won't get very far (as hundreds of studies have shown us so far). If you combine your Strategy with professional PR, Stories that People want to talk about, a Brand that People want to be Part of and with your group of high involved Influentials - you will have probably better success in your marketing results.