6 Comments »Danny Sullivan has posted a great article for Advertising Age about search ads being the revolutionary advertising tool, not social ads. Danny has been a thought leader in the search engine industry for more then a decade so he has a slight bias but honestly, he makes a hell of a point:
Consider what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told us about the transformation: “We are announcing a new advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people.”
“Getting into” conversations. Yes, how we enjoy that. You’re in a coffee shop talking with a friend, and suddenly along comes the spokesperson for an artificial sweetener, just wanting to have a chat.
Go. Away.
Facebook holds the most accurate depiction of the social graph (at least in the United States). Facebook also has the ability to target ads based on profile data, through trusted connections and through conversations. While this may be the holy grail of market research it may not necessarily be the holy grail of advertising channels. As I previously suggested, Facebook has an unproven advertising model. For Facebook’s sake I hope that they have data backing up this model, otherwise they may have trouble validating their $15 billion valuation.
Danny definitely has a great point: “Search offers a key way for new products to emerge and be spread around. People turn to search for solutions.” It’s really as simple as that. I have to agree with Danny but if there was some way to combine the best of both worlds, you would truly have a phenomenal advertising opportunity. Imagine if Google enabled advertisers to not just market by keyword but also to select demographic information for each visitor. This would be revolutionary.
I can guarantee you that Google is working on this but they are going to need access to the type of data that Facebook has. We’ll see how this pans out but together, Facebook and Google would be a truly unstoppable force. Too bad Google doesn’t have an extra $15 billion to spend. In the meantime, search advertising reigns supreme and Facebook will be left to prove the viability of Social Ads. Facebook may come out on top but we still live in the age of the search engine.
“Imagine if Google enabled advertisers to not just market by keyword but also to select demographic information for each visitor. This would be revolutionary.”
Hey Nick. Hope you had a great holiday. My take is that Google already has far more than user check-boxed demographic info and they heavily leverage it when serving up search results. With few exceptions, advertisers want a consumer to buy their product and they really don't care if the buyer is between ages x and y (unless it's booze of course). Every time we search we give Google better information on which to serve us more relivent ads, thus they are able to serve less ads (as they have been in recent quarters) but get greater conversion and thus higher revenue.
I think the question we should ask ourselves is: Will user reported demographic information combined with “group” association be a net positive ROI means for advertisers to target consumers? If they answer is yes, then we must ask: Will it be more or less effective than results served through targeted search results?
It's very important to understand that Google search is a living and learning organism. Every time we search and then click the system gets better at iterating the next searchers true intentions. And the system has been learning for almost 10 years.
“Imagine if Google enabled advertisers to not just market by keyword but also to select demographic information for each visitor. This would be revolutionary.”
Hey Nick. Hope you had a great holiday. My take is that Google already has far more than user check-boxed demographic info and they heavily leverage it when serving up search results. With few exceptions, advertisers want a consumer to buy their product and they really don’t care if the buyer is between ages x and y (unless it’s booze of course). Every time we search we give Google better information on which to serve us more relivent ads, thus they are able to serve less ads (as they have been in recent quarters) but get greater conversion and thus higher revenue.
I think the question we should ask ourselves is: Will user reported demographic information combined with “group” association be a net positive ROI means for advertisers to target consumers? If they answer is yes, then we must ask: Will it be more or less effective than results served through targeted search results?
It’s very important to understand that Google search is a living and learning organism. Every time we search and then click the system gets better at iterating the next searchers true intentions. And the system has been learning for almost 10 years.
Nick, you make a great point about combining keywords with demographic information. This is precisely why I think Microsoft acquired $240 million equity stake in Facebook, valuing the company at a whopping $15 billion.
Nick, you make a great point about combining keywords with demographic information. This is precisely why I think Microsoft acquired $240 million equity stake in Facebook, valuing the company at a whopping $15 billion.
I agree.In fact I was going through the demographic composition of Facebook on http://www.mosaic-service.com/blog/index.php.It seems to be a great tool for contextual advertising.However that stated Iam sure Google also would come out with a similar tool in the near future.
I agree.In fact I was going through the demographic composition of Facebook on http://www.mosaic-service.com/blog/index.php.It seems to be a great tool for contextual advertising.However that stated Iam sure Google also would come out with a similar tool in the near future.