Google’s product leader for display ads business, Jason Bigler, took to Twitter yesterday to announce his not-so shocked reaction over General Motors, ya know—the nation’s third-biggest advertiser, slashing its $10 million Facebook campaign budget to zilch.
The Wall Street Journal’s Dennis K. Berman told the world via the micro-blogging service that GM pulled its $10 million advertising campaign from Facebook because “the ads didn’t work.” Bigler obviously agreed with the reporter’s sentiments.
Google’s ad boss has a reason to jump on the Facebook-bashing bandwagon, though. After all, his company operates its own social network that directly competes with Mark Zuckerberg’s widely-popular website. However, amid the Twitter trash-talk, there just might be some actual truths to Facebook’s potentially flawed campaign techniques when compared to Google’s advertising methods.
According to Business Insider:
Google’s perfect online ad product is the search ad. Search ads are perfect because the people paying for the ads know that the people looking at the ads want to see them. Consumers go on to Google and search for products or information about products, and Google shows them ads from the company that makes that product (and ads from its competitors). There is no guesswork in the targeting of Google ads. The same cannot be said for Facebook ads. Facebook ads are targeted the old-fashioned way.
Facebook essentially sells ads aimed at the types of people who will eye them. Its primary advantage is systematic data cropping, which can help divulge more details about who exactly views ads. On the other hand, Facebook places plugs in a unseen corner on its website.
So, the issue comes down to whether advertisers want a comprehensive Google search ad, or a tiny spot on Facebook that might appear to interested people. According to Bigler and pundits, that is why advertisers leave Facebook; it has not developed an ad methodology akin to competitors.
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