by samAs you will have heard, Google recently released Google + (Plus), a new social media service. Google has made a giant step forward in the name of synergy, combining many features that other services offer individually as part of an almost all-inclusive internet package. I’m not sure if the service will prove to be a real competitor to Facebook, but if it does, the online marketing potential is enormous.
Facebook has an advantage over Google in terms of targeted marketing. If Google+ takes off, then, like Facebook, Google will be acquiring large amounts of specialised and accurate information. The +1 button has been (in part) legitimised in its pairing with the ‘sparks’ service, which offers interest-relevant content generation. This stumble-upon likeness goes to show the extent to which Google is attempting to keep users’ interest. Couple this with the public sharing and recommendation potential offered by the +1 feature, and you might have a service that rivals Facebook’s ‘like’ button. Thanks to the circles feature, you can also take large steps to ensure that, in terms of recommended content, you are seeing only that which you and those of similar interests want to see.
There is serious potential for Google to become a social and Internet marketing mammoth, considering that this new feature-rich service is built on the most popular search engine in the Western world. When you also consider that Ad Words is one of the most highly utilised internet marketing services and the distributional faculties of the content archive, it isn’t hard to imagine a fairly monopolistic future for online marketing if Plus were to take off.
One of the issues with Facebook PPC is that there is a low CTR (click-through rate) as users are there to socialise. If Google reaches anywhere near the success of Facebook, then not only will they be able to respond to the wants of the user via their search engine and ads, but they will also be able to tailor their ads to the likes and interests of the user. The clincher here, though, is that by offering many services in one package, they will be covering a lot of the bases that internet users want covered, for which they may normally visit many separate websites. This means that exposure to the highly targeted ads would only increase. Even if the click-through rate isn’t significantly higher than Facebook’s PPC, they will still be covering all the bases in the realm of internet marketing.