BeauJangles
Lifer
- Aug 26, 2001
- 13,941
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Yeah, obviously Facebook has a huge advantage over other advertising platforms because, once a piece of material takes off, it has far more weight with users as it is passed from friend to friend. Leveraging this idea and leveraging the idea of "social search" can make Facebook an indirect competitor for Google AND potentially make them billions. For now, though, their current ad platform is excellent and highly profitable. I think that in a few years it is likely we'll see a Facebook Content Network that uses details from your Facebook account to show you advertising on other websites which, potentially, could deliver highly targeted ads to users across the entire internet and is something that Google cannot compete with.
Don't think for a second though that Facebook ads don't mint money. Yeah, CTR is lower on Facebook than on targeted search, but that's for obvious reasons. Why do you hop on Facebook? To check out what your friends are doing or to post an update about what you're doing. Most users aren't in any sort of buying or taking-action mode. Hence, lots of ads go ignored.
When you type in "buy wireless mouse" you are already thinking about a wireless mouse... you are FAR more likely to click on ads presented to you about wireless mice because you are in buying mode.
Pricing reflects this idea. Keywords on Google like "buy wireless mouse" are easily 10x more money than keywords like "wireless mouse technology." The first keyword targets people ready to buy, the second targets people who are only interested in the technology.
Facebook ads are much cheaper than ads on Google because they cannot target people who are ready to take action as easily. That doesn't mean, though, that the ads are useless. It simply means that the number of clicks you get will be substantially lower.
A good CTR on facebook hovers at less than 1%. A good CTR on Google can be near 4%. Huge difference, but, like I said above, there are thousands of people and companies that pump thousands of dollars into Facebook advertising every day... and that's because it works. It just takes significantly more page impressions to generate the equivalent number of clicks. What is good for Facebook, however, is that each user generates A LOT of page views.
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