Facebook and Shopping on a budget-An unlikely connection

Most people don't give online advertising a second thought. Not only because they carry the threat of viruses, but pop ups and other forms of online advertising is annoying and obtrusive-who wants their entire window to suddenly be filled with a movie trailer when they're shopping for shoes-and usually advertises complete nonsense (today I saw ads for instant cash prizes if you take a video game IQ test).

However, facebook has come up with yet another innovative way to set it apart from the rest of the online world by creating "engagement ads". This is an experimental form of advertising that has been evolving since its creation last spring. It incorporate's social networking into advertising, by allowing users interact with both what is being advertised and each other, instead of just seeing it in traditional advertisers. Also, depending on their profile information (your interests, relationship status, and other personal information) the advertisements are streamlined to what would interest users the most. To test out this theory, I set my relationship status to "engaged" one month ago. I was correct- most of my ads started becoming wedding related- today they are advertising a wedding photographer, a mosquito prevention company that specializes in weddings, a DC club that does bachelorette parties, and a "bridal weight loss". Since I am not engaged, this is not helpful, but for those whose facebook pages actually do reflect their interests, these ads can expose them to things they like but would never have found on their own.

I realized that the silly wedding experiment could also be tested to see if facebook's advertising was effective for shopping on a budget, by writing in "cheap clothes" as one of my interests, and "shopping on a budget" for my activities. Slowly, I noticed a trend in my advertisements becoming related to these things. While it was not as accurate as the wedding experiment-putting the word 'fashion' somewhere in my interests was probably have helped, since many of the ads were related to grocery shopping or other types of shopping- I still got many ads that reflected my keywords. These are some of my favorite new sites I have found through facebook advertising...

http://www.thebudgetfashionista.com/: Just like ours, this blog offers fashion and beauty advice for shoppers on a budget, information about sales, and even gives coupons!

http://www.go2tshirts.com/: This search engine made specifically for T-shirts allows users to find the cheapest price possible by picking from thousands of different websites that carry the same design of T-shirt and looking for the cheapest. It takes all the work out of bargain hunting!

http://www.fashionbug.com/home.jsp: This website offers a great selection of stylish yet affordable handbags, accessories, and shoes for a plus size women, a demographic that is normally not given many options in clothes that are stylish, let alone affordable.

http://www.theonlineclothingboutique.com/: The online clothing boutique offers designer clothing for discounts of up to 50 percent!

Thanks to facebook, I found all of these sites and more. Facebook also helps both the customer and the companies by allowing users to "like"and become "fans" of certain ads, and suggest to their friends the ones they think they would like. Sometimes you can even be rewarded by doing so, by receiving a discount code to the store's website after you suggest it to them.

So next time you see the ads on the side of your facebook page, don't dismiss them quite yet- by placing the simple words "fashion on a budget" anywhere in your profile, you can be sure that these ads will soon reflect them!

L.D.