Unknown to many businesses, Facebook has their own PPC (pay per click) advertising program which is now squarely in competition with Google’s AdWords program.
Facebook Advertising has started to come into its own in the last 3-6 months, having been a very poor cousin to Google’s highly popular (and successful) AdWords program for a long time.
Businesses and affiliate marketers are starting to see the unique benefits offered by Facebook, so I wanted to give you a brief introduction to what makes Facebook Ads different than AdWords, and what kind of markets it would best serve.
Firstly, Facebook Ads IS very similar to AdWords in that they operate a PPC (pay per click) or CPC (cost per click) advertising model. In other words, advertisers only pay Facebook money when someone actually clicks on one of their ads, rather than paying for general exposure. This is a very attractive advertising option for many advertisers, because it allows you to only pay to show your ads to people who are genuinely interested in your offer and who take the extra step of actually clicking on your ad to learn more.
Facebook Ads also has a CPM model (cost per 1,000 impressions), which is similar to the ever-popular banner ad form of marketing developed in the earlier days of the World Wide Web. In this scenario, the advertiser pays Facebook a fee for every 1,000 times their ad is shown, RATHER than everytime it is clicked on. In certain circumstances, this can be more cost-effective to advertisers, depending on their market place, demographics & budget.
Where Facebook Ads and Google AdWords most differ, however, is in how the ads are displayed, or the targeting mechanism.
With Google AdWords, ads are shown on Google’s search engine pages when someone conducts a search using keyword phrases targeting the information they want to find. So, for example, if a Google searcher is looking to find a cheap airfare from Sydney to Melbourne, they might go to Google & type cheap airfare sydney melbourne (or similar). Then, all the natural (organic) search results would show up, along with those ads that are triggered by the appropriate keywords (such as cheap airfare, sydney to melbourne airfare, discount airfares, etc). Here’s a sample of Google ads which might show up for that search:
If the searcher found one of those ads interesting, they’d click on it and get sent to the advertiser’s website, and the advertiser would pay a click charge.
On the other hand, Facebook ads are targetted by demographic data, such as age, sex, location, educational qualifications, etc. Also, Facebook Ads are not triggered by search results, but rather, what demographic criteria the viewer has, that meets that of the advert. In addition, Facebook Ads are only shown once you’re logged into a Facebook account, unlike Google’s ads which show on the open search engine.