Social advertising refers to advertising formats that make use of the social context of the user viewing the ad.

Social advertising is the first form of advertising to leverage user dynamics such as peer pressure, friend recommendations and likes, and other forms of social influence.

Many experts consider advertising to be the solution to the challenge of making money from social networking sites and social commerce sites.

Advertisers have long noted the large number of visitors on social networks and the amount of time they spend there. As a result, they are willing to pay to place ads and run promotions on social networks.

Advertisers now post ads on all major social networking Web sites. Most ads in social commerce consist of branded content paid by advertisers. These ads belong to two major categories: social advertisements (or social ads) and social apps.

Social advertisements are ads placed in paid-for media space on social media networks. Social apps are branded online applications that support social interactions and user contributions (e.g., Nike+).

Viral marketing-that is, word-of-mouth advertising—lends itself especially well to social networking. There are other innovative ways to advertise in social media.

Consider the following:

• Use a company Facebook page, including a store that attracts fans and lets them “meet” other customers. Then, advertise in your Facebook store.
• Tweet business success stories to your customers.
• Integrate ads into YouTube videos.
• Add a Facebook “Like” button with its sponsored story (advertisement) to your product. For example, Gatorade scored 1.2 million conversations in six months using their “Mission Control” campaign.
• Mercedes-Benz launched a “Tweet Race,” which challenged four teams to drive across the country in Mercedes automobiles to Dallas, Texas, where the 2011 Super Bowl was being played. Each team collected Twitter followers with the help of a celebrity coach. Each tweet or retweet earned the team points, as did other activities, such as photographing other Mercedes cars during the road trip. The team that accumulated the most points by the end of the trip was declared the winner.
• Facebook has introduced a feature called the “sponsored story.” When a member chats with friends and one of them indicates that he or she “checked into” a place or “liked it,” say at Starbucks, a boxed “sponsored story” (an advertisement) will appear with the Starbucks logo (fee paid to Facebook). Furthermore, the name “Starbucks” will also appear in the user’s news feed (another fee paid to Facebook). The users have the option to delete the boxed advertisement.