Ducati lets surfers earn rewards for sharing its new social ads

Members of social networks often share advertising content without earning any reward. But Peer2.com is looking to change the incentive system for social ads and they've enlisted Ducati in their newest ad campaign.

The new advertising campaign involves a (hopefully) viral ad that lets users "Win a Date With Ducati" and answer a set of personality questions that pairs participants with the proper Ducati motorcycle.

The campaign, titled "It's Easy to Fall in Love with a Beautiful Italian," encourages viewers to share their results across social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Digg. Members of Peer2 who share the Ducati ad link to the quiz will earn reward points whenever someone in their personal network clicks on the Ducati ad. The points are redeemable on Amazon. Peer2 is also working with brands like Miss Sixty, Energie, SuperFoodsRx and Brave Soldierat launch.

Jason Chinnock, Ducati's sales and marketing director, tells MarketingDaily:

"We are in the process of reviewing our entire marketing strategy for next year. In traditional media, we have been very segment-oriented, but we are branching out to do more non-sector efforts, more lifestyle-oriented programs."  

Ducati is cutting back its print advertising in favor of digital ads. Says Chinnock: "We are not looking to go digital to save money. We are actually spending the same, but with efforts targeting people who are more likely to be interested in us."

By rewarding people for sharing their content, Ducati is hoping to get more reliable sharing — and perhaps wider distribution from people who do not typically share ad content on social networks.

Peer2 launched a week ago and has about 2,000 members. The company describes itself as "a service that pays you for the traffic to your pages, and rewards you for things you are already doing online. We give you the tools to earn points each time someone visits your profile and interacts with content from one of our clients. The more friends and accounts you have out there on the Web, the greater the potential to earn points for rewards. It's that simple."

in its FAQ, Peer2 explains how it differs from spam:

"Although our programming is sponsored, part of our job is to make sure that the programming; the videos, the games and the contests are cool enough that you’ll want to share it with your friends. If something is not to your tastes, then there’s no need to share it."

Considering how quickly social network users are willing to share content that earns them no returns, a slight effort to return something to them could go a long way. And if they work with companies that produce compelling content, it could be a very profitable effort. (Though at the moment, it looks like their player is not compatible with Macs.)

Joey Caroni, co-founder of Peer2, tells MediaPost: "Our advertisers are only paying for engagements, not impressions. So Ducati is only paying for people who actually engage with programs, who click on their content."