November 7th, 2007
The Difference between a Recommendation and an Ad
by Joshua Porter | 
7 Comments
A quick thought regarding Facebook’s new Social Ads platform.
A recommendation is something you get from someone who knows something about you. They have seen an item of interest and thought that you might gain some use by it. They give their recommendation freely, knowing that it may do you some good, expecting nothing in return other than perhaps a “thank you”. Recommendations are thus social capital.
The primary reason for a recommendation is a need on the receiver’s side.
An advertisement is something you get from someone who may or may not know something about you. They have an item they want you to be interested in, and hope you might gain some use by it. They give it freely, but they do expect something in return as they are paying for this transaction. Thus they are biased, however small, to give you that ad. Advertisers will never give you what they objectively think is best for you. They’ll give you what they have. Ads are thus economic capital.
The primary reason for an advertisement is a need on the sender’s side.
Facebook cannot give recommendations as long as they accept money from advertisers which constrains the items available for placement. They are being paid to show only certain stuff…not necessarily the stuff that’s best for you, but the stuff made by the people who are giving them money.
To their credit, Facebook doesn’t seem to be using the term “recommendation”…yet.
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Bokardo is the blog of Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer. I live in Newburyport, MA, USA.
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Comments ( 7 Responses so far )
1. Amir D on November 7th, 2007 (Comment) #
Joshua, I read today that perhaps in the future, users who recommend a product may be given a discount or some other incentive to share it with their network. Should this happen I think it might turn social advertising into something, which is more social spam or ‘friendly spam’ as people end up recommending products and services in order to obtain tangible value i.e. economic capital. I can imagine notices reading “Please friends! If you buy this I get two for free!!”.. Is social advertising going to end up being an old fashion pyramid scam-like monster? I hope not.
It really boils down to the motivation to recommend and whether or not one consider their friends or what he or she gets out of it.
I do like the idea of notifying your network when you buy something (”Amir just bought X on Y”), thus making the recommendation less explicit. It is part of Project Beacon on Facebook.
2. Michael Barrish on November 7th, 2007 (Comment) #
Joshua, while I basically agree with you, I think it’s worth noting that some recommendations are offered not only because of a need on the receiver’s side but one on the sender’s. Take NetFlix. By offering film recommendations based on previous rentals, etc., NetFlix is attempting to add value to their services, ultimately to win over more customers. They have my interests in mind because it’s in their interests to do so. This is not meant as a criticism of NetFlix–far from it. I’m just saying that when it comes to offering recommendations, the underlying motivation can be a bit more subtle than you note.
3. Josh on November 7th, 2007 (Comment) #
Michael, I’ve amended my post to say “primary reason”.
Netflix, though, is like Amazon. They give what can be considered recommendations because they’re not being paid to do it, nor are they choosing from a small set of options created by a paid barrier.
When Netflix recommends a movie, they’re telling you which one of all of the movies you might like.
When Facebook shows you an ad, as I understand it, they’re essentially saying “your friend liked X”, where X is chosen from a delimited set of choices, choices that have been paid for.
4. atzberger on November 9th, 2007 (Comment) #
Dear Josh,
I cannot follow your Argument.
I like the definition: “A recommendation is something you get from someone who knows something about you.”
Facebook knows you are visiting a particular page and thus gives you a more or less appropriate link/item/choice.
More or less appropriate is constrained by the technology used and the size of the available set of choices. This will develop over time. So this would be an operational and not a structural point.
To use a primary reason as distinction seems dificult to me. A see al lot of sincere bloggers linking to amazon for books they are recommending to their readers. Is this an ad or a recommendation?
Of course amazon is not getting paid for their recommendations. They are the retailer themself. They get their income if you order based on the recommendation.
regards
Marco
5. pepelicious on November 9th, 2007 (Comment) #
An interesting post from Valleywag regarding the possible illegality of these ads which may be construed in New York as nonconsented endorsements.
Facebook challenges the allegations with pure semantics: What are enorsements to you are representations to them.
Bah.
Oh well at least someone figured out a hack
6. Trip on November 13th, 2007 (Comment) #
A great topic of discussion and one that begs for more clarification. I think the economic justification in the definition between ad and recommendation may be a flaw in your model, as many are paid to make buying recommendations to others.
Having said that, I think the most important thing to consider here is the value to the end recipient. Does the ad or recommendation actually add any value to the experience of the end user? The sites that embrace more relevant targeting of ads and recommendations will enhance the end user experience. Anything else (IE Facebook’s solution) will be deemed interruptive (and summarily ignored).
This problem of relevance is one that the Social Networks qua Social Networks need to deal with soon, as there will soon be a migration away from these “meta networks” to more vertical and specific communities. See: http://www.relevantlyspeaking.com/rs/2007/10/1/social-networking-is-a-feature.html for more.
7. Johan on November 17th, 2007 (Comment) #
The whole point is that you deliver truthworthy, honest, unbiased reviews whether you get paid to do reviews or not.
You get paid for your time, but not to boost any products to say nice things about them, or make the bad things about products look more nice.
The danger lies around the corner though, since I have seen many reviews to take a defensive approach towards what they review.