I am a facebook user.  I have a ‘profile’.  I have 300-something ‘friends’.  Many of whom I have lost contact with in recent years so it’s especially nice to catch up.  I enjoy looking at the status updates of my friends to see what’s going on in their lives…

 I would not describe myself as someone who regularly watches television ads.  As a researcher, I sometimes find myself noticing when a client’s ad comes on but overall I find that I’m much more of a channel surfer when the program I’m watching goes to commercial.  In fact, I tend to have a ‘backup’ show running simultaneously so I have a channel to switch to when ads come on.  I’ll even go as far as waiting 20 minutes into a program to being watching it, so I can be sure to avoid all the commercials. 

 t’s amazing how many more products and concepts I’m receptive to when I’m ‘facebooking’.  Whenever a ‘friend’ posts that they ‘like’ such and such store or product, I without a doubt will click on said store or product to see what it’s all about.  Sometimes it leads to further investigation and sometimes it doesn’t, but it is definitely a much stronger method of getting me to care about or be interested in something…First, it’s an online word-of-mouth from someone I know and therefore have a certain trust in or background on.  Second, I’m already on the computer so the motivation to go and investigate a product or idea is much higher than when I’m sitting in front of the TV or if I’m somewhere reading a magazine. 

Not only that, for every product I click on, there’s a chance I will decide to ‘like’ it myself, thereby exposing all 300-something of my friends to the idea. 

I’d bet it’s not long before advertisers forgo TV and move entirely online.