《考研英语阅读理解100篇 高分版》 Unit 9 - TEXT THREE

Depending on your age and memory, it was a week of radically new or reassuringly old developments in the advertising industry. To Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, a popular social-networking website, it was the former. Standing in front of about 250 mostly middle-aged advertising executives on 6th November, he announced that Facebook was offering them a new deal. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people,” he said, “but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation.” Using his firm's new approach, he claimed, advertisers will be able to piggyback on the “social actions” of Facebook users, since “people influence people”.
Mr. Zuckerberg's underlying idea is hardly new. But, says Randall Rothenberg, the boss of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade association, the announcements this week by Facebook and its larger rival, MySpace, which has a similar ad system, could amount to a big step forward in conversational marketing. If new technologies that are explicitly based on social interactions prove effective, he thinks, they might advance web advertising to its fourth phase.
From the point of view of marketers, the existing types of online ads already represent breakthroughs. In search, they can now target consumers who express interest in a particular product or service by typing a keyword; they pay only when a consumer responds, by clicking on their ads. In display, they can track and measure how their ads are viewed and whether a consumer is paying attention better than they ever could with television ads. Yet now the holy grail of observing and even participating in consumers' conversations appears within reach.
The first step for brands to socialise with consumers is to start profile pages on social networks and then accept “friend requests” from individuals. On MySpace, brands have been doing this for a while. For instance, Warner Bros, a Hollywood studio, had a MySpace page for 300, its film about Spartan warriors. It signed up some 200,000 friends, who watched trailers, talked the film up before its release, and counted down toward its DVD release.
Facebook, from this week, also lets brands create their own pages. Coca-Cola, for instance, has a Sprite page and a “Sprite Sips” game that lets users play with a little animated character on their own pages. Facebook makes this a social act by automatically informing the player's friends, via tiny “news feed” alerts, of the fun in progress. Thus, at least in theory, a Sprite “experience” can travel through an entire group, just as Messrs Lazarsfeld and Katz once described in the offline world.
In many cases, Facebook users can also treat brands' pages like those of other friends, by adding reviews, photos or comments, say. Each of these actions might again be communicated instantly to the news feeds of their clique. Obviously this is a double-edged sword, since they can just as easily criticise a brand as praise it. Facebook even plans to monitor and use actions beyond its own site to place them in a social context. If, for instance, a Facebook user makes a purchase at Fandango, a website that sells cinema tickets, this information again shows up on the news feeds of his friends on Facebook, who might decide to come along. If he buys a book or shirt on another site, then this implicit recommendation pops up, too.
1. The fourth phase of web advertising is _____.
[A] creating brands' own pages on social-networking websites
[B] the strategy of conversational marketing
[C] online advertising through various means
[D] interactive advertising
2. The new advertising model makes breakthrough in _____.
[A] allowing marketers to find consumers with a keyword
[B] providing marketers access to measure their ads' effectiveness
[C] encouraging consumers to have more commun-ication and interaction
[D] endowing marketers with the right of creating their own pages
3. The case of Warner Bros implies that _____.
[A] MySpace is having a step further than Facebook
[B] the “friend request” approach is effective
[C] some initial steps of the new advertising model have been taken
[D] this kind of advertising model fits the film industry
4. About Facebook, which one of the following statements is TRUE?
[A] It has reached a consensus with MySpace in pushing forward the new advertising model.
[B] It is marching into a new phase of the advertising industry based on its expertise in advertisement.
[C] It will make full use of the social actions of its users in the new advertising model.
[D] It provides customized service to commercial organizations to facilitate their success.
5. Facebook's principle of “people influence people” is best reflected in its _____.
[A] special pages for famous brands like Coca-cola
[B] “Sprite Sips” game on the Sprite page
[C] tiny alerts of news feeds
[D] profile pages and “friends request” to socialize people