News Corp's earnings release had some interesting nuggets. Rupert Murdoch, the man who grew up a short drive from Edelman's office in South Melbourne, has an interesting issue on his hands.

While MySpace is booming, with any number of metrics showing continued strong numbers participating in the social networking site, revenues are down.

There are a number of thoughts, many of them from Rupert himself, other thoughts from commentators, but I still think a large part of the decline in revenues is that people who participate in social networks and many other social media platforms such as blogs, forums and other interactive spaces, aren't at all interested in advertisements.

When people visit these social sites, they have specific issues to discuss, specific conversations to conduct. They want to listen to people like themselves, they want to conduct old fashioned "word of mouth", they want to learn, to ask and to argue.

They don't want to have some lame banner ad or even a contextual ad which may refer to words on the site and provide an ad which is more specific to their interests. Many of these people are part of online communities that are incredibly engaged, totally immersed, and aren't attracted to, or interested in clicking through to an advertisement.

This is a greater issue for the online space - and for advertising. Where TV, radio and print ratings / media buying metrics provide vague and broad approximations of circulation, readership, viewers and listeners - assuming that every article is read, every 30 second advertisement is watched and every radio ad is listened to in an almost hygienic vaccuum of attention and engagement - social media is damned by statistics which are extremely accurate.

In plain terms, if an ad has been broadcast over a TV network to 500,000 people, how many were actually watching, paying attention, believed the ad, and wanted the product? If 27,138 people have discussed a product on an online forum - we know how many people clicked through and were engaged in discussion. To the single click.

Which number is more valuable? Which people were more engaged? Which had the best outcomes in terms of building trust and business goals? Importantly, which one cost more money for the company - the TV advertisement, or the direct online engagement, with the company participating in forum and blog discussion?

The challenge is that certain social networks and social media channels might have the perception attached that they are only effective for specific marketing (in the same way that Direct Marketing is) and suffer through lack of attention from marketers and communicators, rather than being seen it as an channel to build awareness on a mass scale in a credible way.

For other thoughts, click here and here...

Con Frantzeskos
Edelman Australia
www.edelman.com.au