Zuckerberg Still Believes in Beacon, Social Advertising

Even though most in the ad community have deemed Beacon a disaster for Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg still believes in the basic idea. In other words, bad execution doesn’t necessarily mean bad idea.

In an interview with GigaOm, Zuckerberg says:

“Beacon was … part of this while [sic] effort to blur the boundaries between what’s inside Facebook and what’s outside Facebook. Beacon was our first cut at a protocol to do that.

When it comes to social ads we really want to line up what people are trying to do on Facebook and the utility it offers with monetization. If you look at what people are trying to do on the site, it’s communicating and connecting with each other and sharing information, so the business model should be around people sharing information and staying connected.”

He makes a valuable point. Businessweek, among others, has criticized social network advertising because click-through rates are terrible. But focusing on click-through is a content-site mentality, and it doesn’t work on a social network site.

Engaging social network users isn’t about interrupting them while they’re trying to interact with their friends; it’s about finding a way to participate in the conversation. Or make the conversation easier. Or more fun. Or more productive. And if Beacon was a bad execution, it won’t be the last one. But the breakthrough idea is still out there, I’m confident of that.