Both advertising giants offer paid advertising but they are very different animals, while the Google display network is comparable to Facebooks advertising model it is perhaps not as refined. Although Google display appears based on keywords much like Facebooks interests the demographic options are limited because google lacks the massive client database that Facebook holds, that said Facebook advertising is only as good as your audience profile completion.

Both campaigns offer either PPC – (pay per click) where the advertiser is only charged for a click through or CPM – (cost per mille) where the advertiser is charged per thousand impressions.

PPC is fantastic in that your ad could potentially appear an unlimited number of times but you only pay for the click through. However the price for a high visibility ad spot is considerably higher than CPM which operates on a more traditional model.

Advertisers are drawn towards CPM over CPC because of the enormous amount of visibility it can bring relative to price. By exposing potential clients to the ad is even when the ad itself is not clicked it can be used for branding and if the ad is attention grabbing, the CTR -Click Through Rate may still be high and thus bring in traffic.

Facebook Adverts

A Facebook add can be created by visiting > http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/ If you’ve already set up a non-personal page you have the option of linking to it, or alternatively to an external URL such as your website.

Creating your Advert

The Suggest advert functionality will generate an advert with images and content from your chosen URL or page but will create a very basic advert and cannot be recommended.

Your advert title has a 25 Characters.

The body of the advert has 90 characters for a brief summary and USP (Unique Selling Point)

An image must be selected., this image can be drawn from your business page/website or uploaded. Make sure the image is viewable in a small format.

Targetting your Ad

Location – simple enough where would you like your advert to be seen. You can choose multiple Cities or Countries. Obviously if your product is only available in 3 cities in the UK it’s not work advertising globally.

Demographics – Facebook allow you to target your ads to users of a specific gender or minimum age, marital/ relationship status, languages spoken, Education and even workplace. It goes without saying that the more precise your ad targeting the smaller your potential audience and you may exclude customers with incomplete profiles.

Interests – This is what really differentiates Facebook from Google for better or worse. While google allows for targetting of websites based on theme it primarily uses keywords (Search terms), Facebook in contrast relies upon people having tagged themselves as having specific interests or liking pages related to your advert.

Campaigns, pricing and scheduling – Allows you to set a daily or lifetime budget, start and end dates, chose between CPC and CPM and set a maximum bid. With both Facebook and Google an auction occurs for every possible advert impression, Much as with ebay you pay at most just above what the next highest bidder was willing so you may or may not pay your maximum budget.

 Review advert – Once you’ve made your selection you can preview your advert and then proceed to set up payment. Remember this is essentially banner advertising and some studies such as Nielsen, 2007  that up to 86% of impressions are wasted.

Google Adverts

Next week I will be covering Google Search but for now we will remain limited to the display network. Googles version of banner advertising.

Your object is to build an add structured either as a text ad like this

Holiday Last Minute                                       <—- Max 25 Characters

Really cheap last minute holidays!                 <—- Max 35 Characters

Book last minute holidays online.                   <—- Max 35 Characters

www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/                    <—- Display URL (URL as the customer sees it)

holidayhypermarket.co.uk/offers                    <—- Landing page the page your customer sees.

Or even uploading a video advert which will appear before content on sites such as Youtube (bear in mind this is the second largest search engine in the world after google).

Google campaign settings

Google allows you to target your advert by Locations (anywhere you can find on google down to a radius of a postcode), people on mobile devices, desktops and even based on phone company. For our purposes today change networks to Display only else you’ll appear in search and be unable to build an image advert.

Ad extensions

Google let you extend your ad by associating it with other google services such as Location drawn from places or maps, catalogues drawn from Google Merchant Center, Sitelinks, a phone number associating them Google+  and even embedding a mobile app code in the advert allowing the user to download your app rather than browsing your page.

Keywords and placement

Before you actually build your advert Google allow you to target where your advert appears by selecting specific placements, that being websites you want your ad to appear, and websites you don’t want your ad to appear. Or you can give google a general area such as Facebooks interest and appear their. Where your advert appears on these websites can be further refined by the selective use of keywords. For example if your advert is to appear on a science related website you may want to appear next to the technology section rather than the biology section. By selecting keywords found on these pages you can further refine where you appear.

Build your Ad

Googles adbuilder allows for either you uploading a specific pre-prepared advert or using their templates to build one. If you know what you’re doing and can create your own banner I would recommend steering away from the templates. That;’s not to say they can make a solid advert but they are a bit slower to use than offline image manipulation software.

Googles Natural Search ads however are another ball game as the other models are push rather than pull (audience driven rather than seller driven) and as such tend to have a considerably higher CTR. To do the google display network justice however requires a complete article of its own and as such next week I shall focus on building and optimising a campaign with examples.