According to Financial Times, Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, warned on Tuesday that social media sites are “less commercial phenomena, they are more personal phenomena”, more similar to “writing letters to our mothers” than watching television.
“Invading these [social] media with commercial messages might not be the right thing,” Sir Martin told delegates at the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in central London.
“My view is that [privacy] is still a social norm,” Sir Martin said. “People are still concerned about it and the invasion of it.”
According to The New York Times, which is running a story about resistance to Facebook ads, from the perspective of many users, the ads can often seem, at best, presumptuous.
Women who change their status to “engaged” on Facebook to share the news with their friends, for example, report seeing a flood of advertisements for services and products like wedding photographers, skin treatments and weight-loss regimens.
It’s funny to me how the very thing that Interactive marketing promises–the ability to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time–is also the problem. We’re not used to machines knowing who we are and what we want. The day may be near, but it’s not here yet.
