I see his point but it appears to me that McConnell seems to think people should be able to chose when they get advertised to,and that’s ridiculous. Surely product placement would fall at the same immoral hurdle but in an age of file sharing, someone sometime, has to get paid. I don’t like seeing James Bond flashing off his Sony Viao to me but I know that in part it helped fund the film and give me a partially subsidised 2 hours of entertainment.

I also think Mr McConnell is generalising social media. I believe social media advertising is split into 2 parts. Passive advertising – when an ad is shown to a user alongside their social profile, and engaged advertising, when the user is interacting with a brand. For passive advertising - I can break up with my girlfriend by Facebook email or Gmail. One it would seem is immoral while the other is ok because of the platform used. In the case of engaged advertising, I believe as long as the user knows they’re interacting with the brand and the brand does not try and manipulate the conversation it’s having with the end user, then this is an entirely pure way of talking to a user and therefore a great form of advertising.

Either way, in our case it’s great news and I’d love to have a chat with Mr McConnell: “McConnell told the conference that he does not think P&G should continue to buy banner ads on Facebook, although he believes there is still value in branded Facebook applications.”

Adknowledge are a social media ad platform. In September we served 10 billion ads into social media applications across Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Bebo, Friendster and Orkut. Along with monetising apps we also offer brands the opportunity to “rent an app”

Here’s an example: http://apps.new.facebook.com/videotheater/Video.php?contentId=4 for more information pbowen@adknowledge.com