A New Era in Advertising

Cost per thousand. Four-color process. Rates per column inch. Readers per copy.

You may recognize these terms as belonging to the advertising lexicon. Today, however, advertisers are just as likely to talk about cost per click, bid price, and click through rate. With the dawn of the Internet and the rise of both search engine marketing and social media, companies have more options when considering where to spend their advertising dollars. This post will discuss two popular choices for online advertising, Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

Old vs. New

A major difference between traditional and Web advertising is the cost and payment structure. When purchasing a newspaper ad, one pays a flat (and often substantial) fee, determined by the publication and based on ad size and the estimated number of people who will see the message. When advertising with Google or Facebook, however, marketers have much more control, including the ability to choose how much they want to spend per ad, per day and per campaign. There is no cost minimum, allowing an advertiser to design a campaign to meet any budget.

Due to the nature of television and print media, ad buyers must reserve and pay for space well in advance of the advertisement appearing on the chosen channels. Marketing plans can be more fluid with Google or Facebook, as ads become active and visible within hours of enabling them. This elimination of time constraints means companies are free to capitalize on unexpected opportunities. For example, if a hurricane were forecasted to hit an area in a few days, retailers might want to place ads for storm-related supplies—and they could do so immediately.

Flexibility

Oftentimes with traditional media, once the final proof is signed off on, the ad is set in stone. Fortunately, Google and Facebook are more flexible, offering the ability to make changes to ad copy, bid prices or targeting parameters, at any time. Ads can be stopped and started and, with Facebook, can be scheduled to run on specific dates and times, rather than continuously.

This flexibility means an advertiser can react quickly to the wealth of data that both programs offer. If an ad is not garnering the impressions or clicks expected, a marketer can tweak the headline, change the keywords, or modify the target audience in an effort to improve the results.

Facebook lacks flexibility, however, when it comes to choosing the ad headline. If linking the ad to a page within the social network, such as a business page or event, the tool will automatically assign the name of the page as the headline of the ad. This feature limits a marketer’s ability to attract attention with a targeted phrase.

The Hook

Despite Facebook’s restriction on headlines, it offers a great deal of freedom with the remainder of the ad, including allowing for a photo. Search Engine Watch calls the photo “the most important element of a Facebook ad,” as appealing imagery and colors can draw the eye (Morud, 2012, para. 3). An ad that appeared on my Facebook Wall is shown below. While I am not in the market for a Bearded Beanie, I admit that it did catch my attention.

Conversely, Google allows text only—and plain text at that. Its Advertising Policies page details the punctuation and symbols prohibited in ads, including exclamation marks in the title and symbols, numbers and letters that don't adhere to their true meaning anywhere in the ad. (A few examples that demonstrate Adwords’ rules concerning capitalization are shown below.) Without bells, whistles, photos or all caps to attract attention, all ads look remarkably similar, meaning they must be written thoughtfully to communicate that the item being advertised is what the user is seeking.

Targeting

With Adwords, a company targets users based on the keywords they enter into Google’s search bar. A restaurant might select keyword phrases like fine dining, best steakhouse, or upscale restaurant. It can narrow its audience by specifying that its ads should be shown to users in a particular state, city or zip code, or even within a specified radius of an address.

Primarily a social site, not a search site, Facebook has a lot of information about its users, and so its advertising program is built around demographics and psychographics instead of keywords. Like with Adwords, a marketer can specify a geographic area to target, but can also direct ads based on age, gender, relationship status, language, school attended and place of employment. Delving into the psyche of the audience, she can also target potential customers by their interests, religion and political views. Through Facebook’s social network, a company can even target people to whom it is already connected in some way, whether they like its page or are friends with someone who likes the page.

The #1 Difference

Functionality, features and flexibility aside, the major differentiator between advertising on Google and Facebook is the circumstances under which a brand is communicating to its target audience. With Google, one can reach potential customers when they are actively researching a product or maybe even ready to buy. They are on Google because they are looking for the brand (or one like it).

With Facebook, a brand is trying to communicate with people when they are trying to communicate with their friends. This method is more like traditional advertising in that the message is an interruption from another activity. Consciously or not, the people the brand is trying to reach may ignore the message or respond negatively to the disruption. The hope is that, if the ad is targeted correctly, it will be considered a welcome interruption.

Using jargon popularized by marketing software firm HubSpot, Google AdWords is inbound marketing, while Facebook Ads is outbound marketing. HubSpot suggests, “Rather than doing outbound marketing to the masses of people who are trying to block you out, I advocate doing ‘inbound marketing’ where you help yourself ‘get found’ by people already learning about and shopping in your industry” (Halligan, 2010, para. 3).

References

Halligan, B. (2010, July 7). Inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing [Weblog post]. Retrieved November 10, 2012 from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/2989/Inbound-Marketing-vs-Outbound-Marketing.aspx

Morud, M. (2012, April 19). Facebook Ad images – tips for killer creative. Retrieved November 10, 2012 from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2168805/Facebook-Ad-Images-Tips-for-Killer-Creative