Relevance versus Interest: New Social Ads WAR

by deep on July 12th, 2011

You talk about social networking features and use other jargons while discussing about social media, but all tech companies are mainly after one key feature: revenue through advertisements. How can we crunch more and more revenue through ads? Every entrepreneur starts with the goal to add value, which is commendable. But along the way, revenue model starts to kick and everyone gets concerned. That’s when the mind of entrepreneur starts to believe that revenue model is essential for running successful and stable business.

Remember the old story of Google struggling with their classified Ads concepts? It took years for Google to get it right. The concept of Ads with relevance was remarkable and their penetration into almost every part of the web brought them more revenue than anything else. But after the emergence of Facebook, the concept of relevance is being challenged by interests and recommendations. It’s no surprise that even Facebook had to struggle with their advertising platform to make it lucrative and attractive to advertisers and publishers. Thanks to their Facebook Fan page concept which took off really well with businesses.

Right now, there are three important kinds of ads available to us, Google’s Adwords, Facebook Ad and Groupon’s deal. Let’s forget Groupon for a while as their business model is based on coupons and discounts.

Google Adwords is the most popular means to reach out to target audience. Through Google Adwords, you can target users based on location and what content they are looking for. Isn’t that brilliant? If enough budgets are separated, I can reach out to my relevant customers and drive huge traffic to my sites. That’s more than what a business can ask for?

Now this is how you target your audience using Google Ad words.

You choose your target audience.
You choose Keywords related to your business. (Core strength of Google Adwords)
Then create the Ad content and its variation.
Then you bid and run the campaign.

Google has millions of network partners and individual content farmers, that display Google Ads. Google Adwords have advanced to such an extent that there are variety of ways in which they can be displayed. This is relevant Ad Targeting.

1. How Google Ads Target Audience ?

2. Keyword Based Targeting

Facebook Ad is completely different from Google in terms of target audience. Unlike Google, which targets the whole of netizens, Facebook only targets the Facebook users that is growing steadily and has already reached 700 million users. Facebook is still struggling to break out of their platform and target users beyond facebook users, but that will take some brilliant breakthrough and some time. Unlike Google Adwords which is just keywords relevance, Facebook Ad has amazing data on user’s interests and network connection, which it leverages to the extreme.

Here is how you run ads on Facebook:

You create Ad content which consist of title, image and text. (Unlike Google it doesn’t have any variation)
Then you choose your target audience based on Age and locations
Then you can also choose based on interest and social status. (which google can’t)
Then you bid and run the campaign.

1. Facebook Location Targeting

2. Facebook Demographics Targeting

3. Facebook's amazing INTEREST Targeting

Both of these Ad platforms have their own conversion metrics and uses. But Facebook Ads still have a long way to go in terms of helping advertisers optimize the ads and gain more conversion. Google Adwords have tones of optimizers and competitor’s insights to help Advertisers place their Ads effectively. Facebook is still on learning curve and improving their Ads insights, which is great. This is recommendation and interest ad targeting.

So, as you can see – there is tough competition to gain the maximum online advertising share. Note that the diverse targeting ability of Facebook and Google, both have their unique ability. But Google is not happy with this, look what it is doing with Google+. The concept like SPARKS and PUBLIC PROFILE is exactly what Google needs to have the kind of targeting ability as Facebook. On the other hand, Facebook is researching deep into the social conversation to gain relevant information for advertisers.

For business and advertisers, it is interesting because right now they have tons of ways to reach their customers and don’t have to submit to only one platform. More than that advertising is a complicated process which always gives you a vague idea on your ROI, but accurate facts on investment. But things are improving more in the Internet, specifically due to the vast resources and insights that one can have which is not possible on tradition mediums.

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