Intentional Targeting: Search vs. Facebook - Search Engine Watch (SEW) - 0 views
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Rob Laporte on 11 Feb 11Social Intent vs. Search Intent More importantly, Facebook ads not only fail to gauge what a user's current intent might be, but they fail to acknowledge what Facebook know a user's intent is. Essentially, most Facebook users log on to socialize, not buy. In this respect, Facebook ads can make you look a lot like the guy who goes around a cocktail party trying to sell insurance. Social intent is probably one of the main reasons that Facebook's average CPM ranges somewhere between 13 and 53 percent below the industry standard. Indeed, as ClickZ reported, Facebook ads get half the clicks of network banners and the average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads in 2009 was 0.063 percent and 0.051 percent in 2010. Conversely, the average CTR on AdWords is around 2 percent. That's 20 times the industry standard and almost 40 times that for Facebook ads. This is probably because many search sessions revolve specifically around making a purchasing decision -- maybe not buying right then and there, but deciding how the user will buy when they're ready. And when they are ready, there's a decent chance they'll return to Google to recall that product or purchasing decision they arrived at during previous sessions. Context is Everything Given Facebook's position in the marketplace, this isn't to say that Facebook ads should be ignored by marketers. Indeed, Facebook has become such mainstream channel, that it can't be ignored by certain advertisers. As this Webtrends study points out: ... industries that are fun to discuss with our network are seeing higher CTR. ... Brands that are social get a higher CTR, which translates into better engagement metrics: Post Quality Score, EdgeRank, Feedback Rate, and others. In turn, Facebook rewards such behavior with a lower cost-per-click and greater visibility in the News Feed. It's the marketers and/or campaigns that are driven by results, however, that should think twice before investing too much into Facebook -- especially if