Original Post: Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? from SEO-Space 

Earlier this week Facebook unveiled their new Facebook Ads platform. According to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Ads are essentially an ad platform for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. In the past we have discussed the business benefits of Facebook, this new ad platform takes it to a whole new level. They key to this ad platform? The users are in control. They decide if they will endorse or "evangelize" a brand and as a result their friends or family will be exposed the brand. As illustrated in a great post over at Advertising Age entitled Facebook's Big Ad Plan, there are really two parts to Facebook Ads:

1. The first part involves user-initiated recommendations of a brand: When people visit a business' Facebook page, they can choose to share their engagement with the brand (by becoming a "fan" or writing on the brand's "wall"). What this does is establish trust. If your friends or family recommend a brand, chances are you will add that brand to "one of the rungs on the ladder" for your consideration set.

2. The second part is the actual paid-advertising. Facebook will permit advertisers to attach an ad message to those user notifications. To do so, marketers make a Facebook ad buy targeting users by any number of traits users volunteer on their profiles, such as age, political leanings or interests and activities.

I think that Zuckerberg is bang on with the notion that a Pull strategy is going to be the way of the future in terms of advertising. So will Facebook Ads work for you? Well that depends on if you are willing to accept the fact that traditional push strategies are a thing of the past. The consumer is in control. This goes against what traditional marketing managers have done in the past. It's always been a push strategy. Push the brand to the potential consumer, push the product to the potentil consumer… it has become so bad that consumers tend to ignore much of the advertising that is presented to them. Thing of television ads. How many of you turn the channel when an ad comes on? How many run to the kitchen to grab a snack? How many people actually tune in and focus on the ad? Even in the online space, our research has shown that certain users still ignore sponsored listings in favor of organic listings. Others simply ignore sposnored ads because they treat them as unwanted advertising.

As taken from the official Press Release from Facebook Ads,

Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

Here's what Facebook ads can do for you:

• Advanced targeting allowing you to target your audience by age, gender, location, or interests.
• Trusted referrals as you can attach friend-to-friend interaction about your business to your ads.
• Content integration allowing the most relevant content to come to the surface.
• Reach the right audience - Instead of creating an advertisement and hoping that it reaches the right customers, you can create a Facebook Social Ad and target it precisely to the audience you choose.
• Top of Mind Awareness - Facebook Social Ads allow your businesses to become part of people's daily conversations.
• Simplicity - Creating a Social Ad for Facebook is quick and easy. Simply write a creative, tell Facebook who you want seeing your ad, and decide where you want to drive traffic.

But What About Reputation Management?

Opening up advertising to the social masses can be a dangereous thing. You see it keeps business owner's honest. If your product/service is not what users expect it to be, you can bet that you are going to hear about it from users in social media outlets such as Facebook. We've all heard stories of dissatisfied customers who have gone on to blog about a negative experience with a product or brand. The end result that sales of that product plummet leaving the brand to do damage control. Point being is that if you want consumers to promote your brand or your product, you had better make sure that your product satisfies their needs. While the goal with Facebook ads is to promote your brand in a positive light, the social network can also be used to communicate negative experiences with your brand or product. Is that a risk that many companies want to take?

Let's not forget that in order for this to work, users need to share their purchase behavior with their friends and family. Not everybody is willing to do this. Will Facebook Ads work for you? Well Facebook Ads will work for any advertiser providing you put faith in the social masses to endorse your product and brand.

Related Resources

The Facebook Years: Everything You Need to Know About Facebook
Facebook Ads
Facebook Social Ads
Facebook Beacon

Widgets continue to be all the rage on the Internet. The popularity of them is pretty amazing and the viral spread of widgets is pretty impressive as well. Widgets are kind of like Gremlins, you don't want to get water on them or feed them after midnight… For those who don't know what a widget is, a widget is simply a piece of embeddable code that can be found on one site, and embedded in another that can be used to promote your own site, blog or brand. We have discussed widget marketing a number of times in the past. We've touched on the fascination with widgets and the importance of widget marketing in the near future if not already.

So we knew that it was only a matter of time until Google would try to branch out and distribute ads into widgets. In fact, yesterday was that day as Google announced that it will begin distributing ads within "widgets". Google's statement as to what exactly Google Gadget Ads are:

Gadget ads enable advertisers and agencies to engage audiences on the Internet's largest ad network with a rich and interactive new ad format.

The announcement of the "Gadget Ads" has been well received in the financial arena as Google's share price has jumped nicely since the announcement as it is currently near the $554/share mark. (Google's all-time high was around the $558 mark)

What Are Google Gadget Ads?

So just what are Google Gadget Ads? Google describes them as "applications incorporating data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative". This new ad format will allow advertisers to create these interactive ads within widgets that can be spread virally across the Internet. Widgets as you know are simply pieces of software that can include video, images, and dynamically updated data feeds. Advertisers looking for more "pizzazz and flash" will find the use of widget advertising somewhat pleasing as they make use of display advertising over text based ads.

According to Google, benefits of Gadget Ads for Advertisers include the fact that:

• The Google content network comprises thousands of high-quality websites that partner with Google to display targeted ads.
• As an advertiser, you can select sites or let Google's ad targeting display your ads on the most relevant pages.
• Analyze performance by selecting from dozens of predefined interactions and optimize based on those results.
• Gadget ads are built with the same technology as gadgets on iGoogle, which currently has tens of millions of users.
• Use gadget ads to drive significant traffic to your iGoogle gadgets to maintain an ongoing conversation with your target audience.

Currently, gadgets/widgets are being adopted by numerous products from the likes of AOL, IBM and thousands of websites. There is growing use of RSS feeds and widgets that many are using to syndicate their content out to the masses. You can bet that Google's competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft are also working on similar platforms.

Here is a look at some existing ads from the Google Gadget Ads Gallery.

Need more information on Google Gadget Ads?  Here are a few links to Google Gadget resources.

Official Google Gadget Ads Links

About Google Gadget Ads
Benefits of Google Gadget Ads
Features of Google Gadget Ads
Success Stories Using Google Gadget Ads
Tutorial on Google Gadget Ads
Google Gadget Ads Help

I'm not making any friends with Ontario Tourism. Two weeks ago I said in this column they weren't using search. I was quickly corrected by Nick Pedota, who told me my claim was "wildly inaccurate" and that they in fact have "an extensive search program". But based on the following searches I did while in Toronto, they didn't show: Ontario vacations, Ontario resorts, Toronto vacations, Ontario getaways and Ontario holidays. According to Google Trends and their keyword research tool, these are the most common searches, by a substantial margin.

If You're Not Seen, You're Not Doing Search

Here's the reality of search marketing. Its one thing to say "you're doing search" internally and it's a totally different thing to have the searcher realize that "you're doing search". The smart thing to do here would be to give Nick and Ontario Tourism the retraction they're looking for and say I made a mistake (which I did). But this proves too good an example of the disconnect I see all the time; managing a search campaign to budgets, not objectives. I stand by my original claim: Canadian advertisers aren't clueing into the power of search.

Nick wasn't really in a mood to share many details of their campaign, but he did share that they're were bidding on thousands of "targeted keyphrases" and were using heavy geo-targeting to focus on their prime markets (Ontario and the border states). He said that's simply "smart marketing". I can't disagree. It makes sense to target in on your best clicks first, especially if budgets are limited.

Where's the Money Going?

But in this case, are budgets really limited? Let me share some things I was able to dig up on the site. First of all, Ontario Tourism is doing print (lots of print) and TV (lots of TV). The goal?  To drive people to their website. Full page 4 color ads are running multiple times in over 70 dailies and weekly newspapers and 9 magazines. One 4 color full page ad in the Toronto Star would run about $54,000 (there's a certain amount of guessing here, as print rate cards are really a mathematical exercise in confusion and frustration). Circulation of the Toronto Star is 350,000 (on an average day). An excellent conversion rate for a newspaper ad would be 0.5% That means, ideally, 1750 people would actually visit the Ontario Tourism website. Now, I have never in my life seen a newspaper ad convert this well, but even if it did, that would be a cost per visitor of $30.85. If the ad doesn't work that well, the average cost climbs dramatically. And you pay whether or not the ad works.

What People Actually Use

Now, courtesy Yahoo Canada and a recent survey, let's look at what actual travelers cite as the most important influencers in making travel plans. Search and websites are tied for number one and two, used by 51% of respondents in a recent survey. Newspapers and print? Only used by 7%. But yet, only 2.1% of Canadian ad budgets get spent on search, and 42% gets spent on Newspapers and Magazines. I couldn't get any specific percentages for Ontario Tourism, but one only has to look at their campaign page to see that search is very likely getting only a fraction of what's going to newspapers and magazines. And don't even get me started on the TV buys.

The Search Story

So, where is Ontario Tourism in the search results? As Nick shared, they're only geo-targeting the prime markets, and then only for a 3 month period (April through June). Only 1 of the 7 highest traffic key phrases I found (using an Ontario IP) returned an ad or an organic listing for Ontario Travel (the site also hasn't been organically optimized). More specific phrases, like Ontario Summer Vacations or Ontario Wine Getaways, did return more ads. But by bidding on specific phrases (even thousand of "long tail" ones) and not on the more popular ones, Ontario Tourism is catching less than 10% of all the people using search to plan a vacation in Ontario. And unless you're in the top sponsored ad locations (which few of the ads I saw were) you're actually only being seen by a small percentage of those searchers (usually 10 to 30% of them) on the results pages you do appear on. So, according to 97 out of 100 people who are using search to find the official site for Ontario Tourism, they're not "doing search". By the way, you could maintain top spot in Google and Yahoo for all the top traffic phrases for less than $2 per visitor. Remember, that ad in the Toronto Star cost, at a minimum, 15 times that!

Again, let's recap. What's the purpose of the campaign? To drive people to the website. And not just any website. THE official website of Ontario Tourism, the site most people are looking for on these key phrases.

And You're Spending Your Money Where?

Is it really "smarter" to ignore 97% of the people who are actively searching online to find you so you can spend more money running ads in newspapers for the 99.5% of people who have no interest in your site at all? And the real irony here is that if people don't click on a search ad, you don't pay! Take a fraction of that budget from the Toronto Star and blow out the geo-targeting and time parameters and go for the high traffic phrases. After all, there might be people in Saskatchewan or Nova Scotia that are planning a trip to Ontario. Or, perhaps they're planning their trip in September, or February.  If not, it's not costing you anything. Try getting the Toronto Star to offer the same pricing model!

Is this really smarter marketing? You decide. The readership of this column includes some of the smartest marketers on the planet. Blog about this and give me your opinion. Maybe I'm missing something, but I've decided I shouldn't apologize for trying to get advertisers to spend money more effectively. After all, in this case, it's really our money they're spending. At least, it would be if I was an Ontario tax payer. Something tells me after this column, it might be a good thing I live 2000 miles away. Like I said, I'm not making any friends in Ontario.