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I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search

I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search advertising. Back then, the campaigns we ran on Facebook were almost entirely wasted money. But today, Facebook has really improved their ad platform. They offer pretty much unparalleled user targeting features, coupled with some clever tools like product ads that are much easier to use and integrate than Google's. For some advertisers, we've been able to deliver a much lower CPA on Facebook than Adwords or other platforms.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search advertising. Back then, the campaigns we ran on Facebook were almost entirely wasted money. A year ago? You sure you don't mean like 3-4 years ago? 1-2 years ago Facebook advertising was also really awesome with a high ROI. Almost all the people I work with who has done, or still does marketing, has moved almost all of their money into Facebook over the past 2 years because they get a far higher ROI than any other service including Google AdWords. I'm actually surprised to not hear about huge declines in AdWord spending (unless I missed it).
- grandalf 9y ago
  > I'm actually surprised to not hear about huge declines in AdWord spending (unless I missed it). There have been some pretty big signals, the most significant of which has been the pricing of Google phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc. Google found that simply selling high margin consumer electronics was a better investment than growing the user base and delivering a subsidized top-tier experience. Thus Adwords faltering has left the door open for Apple to take over some of Google's former strongholds. The cost of commodity storage tech and mature open source infrastructure means that Google's free cloud products compete mainly on the basis of features. Google's early lead and infrastructure advantage is no longer much of a factor, and Google's recent attempts at product have been (in my opinion) weak compared to Apple and even Microsoft. The problem with Adwords is that pagerank-driven ad units end up being purchased only by the companies willing to blindly pay the most for the ads. Since there are better ROI options out there, only the stupidest (or richest, thus already best-known and tolerant of the lowest yield) companies are the ones buying Adwords ads. Since Google has departed from its original low profile ads and moved into a dark pattern where sponsored content is commingled with actual results, this means that the quality of Google's content (when viewed simply as content) is declining. Another big signal was YouTube Red. The ads got so bad that the only way Google could avoid destroying the platform was to bifurcate it, allowing the ads-present version to sell all the inventory to the poorest people who can't pay $10/month to stop the annoyance. There are two kinds of marketers, those who need to care about ROI, and those who are expected to spend a percentage of their budget on the top few ad options. Google is now catering mainly to the second group, mainly because the second group is larger and cares little about ROI.
- majani 9y ago
  The way I see it, they're going to settle into their niches eventually, where Facebook is the best brand advertising platform and Google is the best direct response advertising platform. In that case, FB would take significant bites of Adsense and YouTube's lunch, but Search would remain unharmed.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

> I work at an agency that does a decent amount of digital PPC advertising. A year ago, we'd almost entirely steer our customers away from Facebook to PPC-search advertising. Back then, the campaigns we ran on Facebook were almost entirely wasted money. A year ago? You sure you don't mean like 3-4 years ago? 1-2 years ago Facebook advertising was also really awesome with a high ROI. Almost all the people I work with who has done, or still does marketing, has moved almost all of their money into Facebook over the past 2 years because they get a far higher ROI than any other service including Google AdWords. I'm actually surprised to not hear about huge declines in AdWord spending (unless I missed it).

grandalf 9y ago
> I'm actually surprised to not hear about huge declines in AdWord spending (unless I missed it). There have been some pretty big signals, the most significant of which has been the pricing of Google phones, tablets, chromebooks, etc. Google found that simply selling high margin consumer electronics was a better investment than growing the user base and delivering a subsidized top-tier experience. Thus Adwords faltering has left the door open for Apple to take over some of Google's former strongholds. The cost of commodity storage tech and mature open source infrastructure means that Google's free cloud products compete mainly on the basis of features. Google's early lead and infrastructure advantage is no longer much of a factor, and Google's recent attempts at product have been (in my opinion) weak compared to Apple and even Microsoft. The problem with Adwords is that pagerank-driven ad units end up being purchased only by the companies willing to blindly pay the most for the ads. Since there are better ROI options out there, only the stupidest (or richest, thus already best-known and tolerant of the lowest yield) companies are the ones buying Adwords ads. Since Google has departed from its original low profile ads and moved into a dark pattern where sponsored content is commingled with actual results, this means that the quality of Google's content (when viewed simply as content) is declining. Another big signal was YouTube Red. The ads got so bad that the only way Google could avoid destroying the platform was to bifurcate it, allowing the ads-present version to sell all the inventory to the poorest people who can't pay $10/month to stop the annoyance. There are two kinds of marketers, those who need to care about ROI, and those who are expected to spend a percentage of their budget on the top few ad options. Google is now catering mainly to the second group, mainly because the second group is larger and cares little about ROI.
majani 9y ago
The way I see it, they're going to settle into their niches eventually, where Facebook is the best brand advertising platform and Google is the best direct response advertising platform. In that case, FB would take significant bites of Adsense and YouTube's lunch, but Search would remain unharmed.