Online Advertising: Facebook Ads vs. Google AdWords vs. LinkedIn

Social Media Today recently compared these three types of online advertising, namely: Facebook Ads, Google AdWords, and LinkedIn.

Social Media Phobias (Photo credit: Intersection Consulting)

Google

Google’s ads have gotten more expensive, and their success often seems to be hit or miss. Wide geographic ranges can give dramatic numbers but few results – narrowing things down geographically seems to accompany a commensurate rise in click quality.  According to the article, Google advertising, “… works if you have a unique and popular product or service. The interface feels professional, with excellent reporting tools, great usability and many various options.”

Facebook

The Facebook advertising experience seemed to be the most satisfying to the writer of the article.  With a demographic and geographic focus (and fast service by Facebook support), ads could be created with near-pinpoint accuracy.  When speaking of Facebook, which is much more of a leisure time site than LinkedIn or Google is, the article stated, “(t)he secret is not to become too serious in your ads and keep them simple.”

LinkedIn

LinkedIn was seen as being great for ads intended to reach strictly professional audiences. However, the LinkedIn admin team took significantly longer to approve advertisements than their counterparts at Facebook and Google took.  The reporting was also rather restricted, only offering a CSV file for download.

I agree with the conclusions drawn in the article – Facebook was overall the best, Google would be helpful for targeted ads for specific, unique or well-known products, and LinkedIn lagged, big time. To my mind, this also dovetails well with these sites’ overall purposes. Facebook is seen as for socializing and so it seems to work with ads in the same way that we are used to be served television commercials. Google and LinkedIn have other purposes and so there is less of an expected marriage of content and online advertising.

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