Archive for September, 2009
I’ve been using Google AdWords for about four years (Or longer), and I’ve never been happy with what AdWords offers. I’ve never run any high budget ad campaigns through AdWords, so maybe my experience doesn’t hold true for everyone. That being said, as a private person who funds ad campaigns out of his own pocket, R8 000.00 to R10 000.00 a month is far from being unsubstantial.
Anyway, I’ve always had an uneasy feeling that Google AdWords is a huge big ripoff, and as the years have gone by, that uneasy feeling has got stronger.
Just recently I joined Facebook. I’ve always had a rather blasé view of Facebook - I mean, Facebook is not the place for self opinionated Internet savvy people who have been playing on the Net longer than most Facebook members have been alive… Right? Well I’m glad to admit that I was wrong about that! I’ve hooked up with loads of old friends, and quite frankly, I’ve even become a bit of a Facebook junkie - Just don’t send me any silly hugs or stupid hatching eggs!
So Facebook has the ability to set up ad campaigns. Over the last few days I’ve been running a campaign on AdWords and a parallel campaign on Facebook, and here are a few of the things I’ve discovered: -
- Facebook ads are MUCH cheaper than AdWords ads! Rather than having to deal with the Google bullshit of constantly trying to make you pay more for your ads, on Facebook you set your daily budget limit and maximum cost per click, and away you go!
- The bounce rate on Facebook ads is MUCH lower than the bounce rate on AdWords ads. I assume this is because of the fact that on Facebook no one (Apart from Facebook of course) stands to profit from ad clicks. It’s a well known fact that AdWords attracts click fraud because ad publishers (On the AdSense side of Google) share the profit of a click. This doesn’t apply to Facebook ads because Facebook host their own ads.
- With Facebook ads there is no bullshit with quality scores and keyword relevance. I’ve actually come to believe that Google has got too “smart” for its own good. How exactly does Google determine quality scores and keyword relevance? As far as I know, the Google crawler examines the HTML of your site, and based on the content it finds, will determine their idea of quality scores and keyword relevance! And the problem with this? The Google crawler can’t examine the content of Flash presentations, nor does it evaluate the affect of executing JavaScript. So you have a sexy Flash site that’s JavaScript intensive, you still need to include HTML text and links to satisfy AdWords that certain keywords do actually apply to your site! What a load of crap!
- The click through rate on Facebook seems to be substantially lower than with AdWords, but I’m perfectly happy with that. As I mentioned earlier, I’m sure that many AdWords clicks are fraudulent, so a lower click through rate on Facebook is cool, because it means that only those who are truly interested in the ad are clicking it.
- Quite contrary to my initial perception of Facebook, traffic originating from Facebook seems to be more “savvy” than that originating from AdWords. This is born out by the fact that sign-ups originating from Facebook seem able to read and follow a few simple instructions, while sign-ups originating from AdWords obviously think they are too smart to read the instructions.
Overall, my experience with Facebook ads has been good, and I’d recommend it very highly to anyone looking for an alternative to being ripped off by Google.
