by samOne of my previous posts concluded that Facebook PPC advertising is best considered as an accompaniment to Google AdWords rather than as a replacement. They are completely different services, with varying intents behind their use. Google’s ubiquity makes paid search a necessity for those in online marketing, as users all over the world turn to Google to find what they need.
Users visit Facebook to socialise and are not necessarily in need of anything but social interaction. This being said, Facebook ads have advantages over AdWords PPC ads, and despite being a less universal means of ‘finding things,’ Facebook’s 750 million user base provides a substantial market to be tapped.
The biggest attraction marketers may have to Facebook PPC ads are the targeting capabilities, which enable advertising agencies to target ‘users’ contextually, whereas Google targets user ‘ searches’. The wealth of information that users submit to Facebook means that Facebook can target extremely accurate levels. Profile information alone enables ads to be targeted by gender, marital status, and location.
In the USA recently, Facebook tested ‘post-code’ targeting, opening up Facebook marketing to extremely local businesses, who may be targeting users within walking distance. Facebook’s inherently social nature makes it natural for users to want to share details pertaining not just to their demographic but their interests and hobbies as well. Everything public is fair game, meaning that users can be targeted based on their listed interests, discussions, and profiles that they have ‘liked’.
In terms of the strengths of the ads themselves, Facebook ads have been known to be less competitive than AdWords due to their specificity. This means that they are often cheaper. Users are also likely to stay for prolonged periods, which means that users will be exposed to ads for long periods. The ad copy limit is longer for Facebook than for Google, which allows for more description per ad. Facebook also allows marketers to insert images, which, if used appropriately, can make it more likely that users pay attention to an ad through the use of an appealing image that’s relevant to their interest or situation.
One of the strengths of Facebook PPC ads, one that is still in development, is the role of ‘ social’ in marketing, an element that enables marketers to mix elements of their PPC and SMO strategies. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the Facebook ‘featured stories’ which notify users of their friends’s interactions with different brands. Although recent Facebook feed experiments are a good indicator, we could be expecting a more slack filter in the future, allowing us to witness the activity of our friends in real-time.
This will mean that instead of seeing stories’ at the side of feeds, users will be witnessing friends’ interactions with brands as they occur. In terms of PPC ads, these social elements can only mean increased exposure. As competition heats up between Google’s social network and Facebook, we can expect Facebook to find new ways to please marketers, which makes this a good time to take notice of Facebook’s PPC capabilities.