Whenever I am on social media and I see an advertisement I usually get annoyed. I never thought they were that big of a deal. Of course, I knew what they were for- I just found some to be useless. With that being said, some ads are interesting and catch my attention.
After reading the Wikipedia article, the Methods and Metrics heading caught my attention. Those in charge of the ads “follow three important principles” to get their products or whatever it is that they are advertising to be shared among friend groups. The principles are: social profile gathering, proximity market analysis, and real-time key word density analysis. Basically, through the things that an individual is interested in, the company will target them and therefore that company’s ads will show up on that individuals profile. It is very peculiar that just through your “likes” a company will assume that you are interested in what they’re selling. Viral marketing has social media to thank for this, because if it weren’t for them (social networks), the marketing world would be very different.
Viral marketing is not something I have ever been interested in, but after reading the article, I found that the methods companies use is very efficient because it allows companies to focus mainly on their targets and not waste their time targeting other people. It also gives companies a larger pool of targets.