BusinessWeek's front page article this past week was on Facebook: "Facebook Sells Your Friends." It explores the idea of Facebook as advertiser juggernaut. I thought the article made a really interesting comparison of Facebook to Google:
"I can target my exact audience, rather than trying to come up with a proxy for it," like looking at search terms or which websites people visit, says Belden, who was spending about $4,000 a month on Facebook earlier in the year before he was forced to rein in his marketing expenses because of budget issues. He adds: "If I was bidding on expensive Google keywords like 'solar,' I'd be going against guys with a much larger marketing budget."
Should Google be getting scared? Especially now that Facebook is branching out with the "Log in with Facebook" and "Facebook Currency" options?
While there is definitely value in being able to target your audience, I think that there is a risk of focusing too narrowly on a specific audience here.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most frequently cited reasons why some people enjoy reading a physical newspaper instead of an online edition is that the reader's eyes wander across the page. Often times, someone will discover an interesting story that they never would have seen or clicked on online because it is on a topic that isn't normally interesting to them; however, due to proximity on the page, the reader discovers it.
With Facebook advertisements, the audience may be so narrow that the ads are only seen by the people who are "most interested" in whatever the product or service is and have therefore already formed their own opinion on the matter, so the advertiser isn't successfully expanding their potential market.
I found an article that further compares Facebook to Google as advertising platforms. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8037491/Facebook-the-gateway-onto-the-internet.html)
ReplyDeleteBasically, Facebook’s biggest challenge is to make people pay attention to ads, because users are there to focus on their friends’ activities, and not on marketing messages. So on that front, Google’s environment is more ad friendly.
However, Facebook does provide some value for brands: get people talking. No matter how broadly or narrowly targeted a marketing message is, if a company provides engaging content and opportunities for people to “like” or share that content, their friends will inevitability see it and maybe engage with it, even if they weren’t part of the original target audience.