Online Advertising: Google vs. Facebook pt. 2

Remarketing

Remarketing is the process whereby advertisers target consumers who have already seen their ads or other materials related to selling their products

Google’s remarketing lets advertisers display ads to users who have already visited certain pages of an advertisers website.  This tool makes sure that ads are placed in front of people who are likely to buy a product.  A person who has already visited the chef’s knives section of cooking website; that person is much more likely to click an remarketed ad about kitchen knives on a website they recognize than on an ad for a random product.  This features serves Google, advertisers, and search users because it helps provide the more relevant results.

Facebook, like Google, offers remarketing to advertisers.  Remarketing operates the same way on Google as it does on Facebook.  Facebook remarketing is better than Google’s because remarketed ads can appear in the users timeline.  This means that when a user will associate the remarketed ad as a friend’s recommendation rather than a straightforward, paid pitch.

Remarketing: Edge Facebook

Advertising Network

Facebook: has a limited number of ways to engage users

• Standard Facebook ad: Comes with title, description and image.  Limited in size.  Appears on right hand side of news feed and user profiles

• Sponsored Story: Story appears in timeline of targeted audience.  These ads are larger than the ads that appear in the right hand column.  These stories have the potential to go viral if friends of a user like a particular advertised story.

Google: Google offers a variety of marketing platforms

• Text ad: Text ads are Google’s bread and butter.  Text ads appear above and alongside search results.
• Image ad:  Users can upload banners or images to illustrate services in a way that plain text ads cannot.
• Video ad: Google’s network includes YouTube.  It is possible for advertisers to put videos for their products in front of videos for that the user want to see.  This form of advertising is particularly effective for advertisers because users cannot escape the advertisement.  Most people will wait fifteen seconds to be able to watch a five or ten minute video.

Advertising Network: Edge Google