It's interesting to see some recent comments about social media, Facebook in particular, along with the notion of 'online communities'.

Yes Facebook has fantastic reach and an engaged audience in the Australian market but a key challenge remains -  achieving an impactful, contextually relevant ad execution without being highly invasive in what users deem a very personal space.

That said, I do wholeheartedly agree that brands should worry (and spend) less trying to create brilliant stand-alone online properties with a 'Field of Dreams' mentality and instead go where the audience already are and build a relationship with them there.

So where are they? Well, aside from Facebook they are spending their time on 'passion sites' in the mid-tail. That is, sites that are about an audience member's key interests and passions. Sites they have sought out for the type and quality of content as well as an element of community given the shared interests and demonstrated engagement by way of forums and other communications. 

Brands have a fantastic opportunity to get involved in this area. These sites can be aggregated (with the help of Adify's technology and services) for the benefit of all involved. The brand recruits a relevant, handpicked audience highly engaged with sites that are either about the product/service market the brand operates in, or about the interests and passions of its key customers.  They also get access to the inventory more efficiently on both a cost and logistics basis. The mid-tail sites want to join such communities as they'll secure a revenue stream from a quality, relevant brand advertiser and enjoy other benefits such as content feeds and product samples that bring value to their site and audience. And the planning and buying fraternity get a quality selection of brand safe mid-tail sites accessible through a single buying point.

There are potentially huge brand and leverage benefits possible through this model. The fact some 'blue chip' brands are already recruiting 'Community Managers' and starting to devote resoucing to this area will only become more common over the next 12 - 24 months. But if their focus is mainly on how to better engage the audience on Facebook then they'll be missing enormous possibilities elsewhere. 

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