Facebook Ads vs Google Ads Infographic

With Facebook having recently released its IPO the question being asked now is whether or not it can beat Google and their ever popular Adwords. Without a doubt Facebook is an extremely popular social networking site and still continues to grow. However one thing that has continued to plague Facebook are its ads. The site continues to grow in popularity but only had an ad click through rate of .05% in 2010 compared to Google’s .4% it is not that good, especially considering it is under the U.S. average click through rate of .1%. For those of you who don’t know the click through rate or CTR is essentially the ads popularity. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an ad divided by number of times it is shown.

In quarter one of 2012 it is reported advertising rates increased by 40% while click throughs fell 8%. Before investing in ads with Facebook just consider click through rates decline by about half after they have been released for a day or two.

Is there really such thing as Google vs. Facebook? Can a social media site be compared to a primary search engine site? Is it not that these two giant websites are of entirely different leagues? Now, these are just few mind boggling questions that had recently become a hot issue circulating over the web. Yes, folks there are actually stories of rivalry between the two web giants.

Although the two are both giants in the web industry but Google is the most gigantic between the two. Having a sold last year an approximately $36.5 billion share in the world of advertising that was said to be 10x bigger than what Facebook had made simply makes Google undoubtedly the biggest giant in the world wide web. So, with such way far difference in financial gain and nature of web services offered, can the two really be compared after all?

All seems to be possible when you talk of the internet and so it is too for both Google and Facebook. In financial aspect, Facebook may be small compared to what Google had had financially gain over last year but if looked closer and trace back records of finances over the past few years Facebook had been silently gaining under a tremendous financial growth rate. Given such stable pattern of consistent growth there is prediction that Facebook will raise up to $4.3 billion within this year if not more than double up its $2billion gain of last year. So, consequently in a few years time it will be at par with Google in no time. This is what actually makes Facebook a huge threat for Google so to speak. In short, there is actually a silent competition and the story Google vs. Facebook is quite true indeed.

Looking closely, web use for social purpose has been tremendously increasing over the years, and in fact, had overtaken the leading purpose of using the internet and that is browsing. Yes, a lot of people still browse but it has been found that more and more people spend longer hours of socializing than browsing. Use of the internet had tilted more on the social side. Way back before such trend people will search the web on articles or news to read. But presently it’s a different setup. The social circle will suggest what to read, what to check out, what’s in and what’s not, where to go to and what to see. These matters may seem to be not much of a big deal. But for the business industry this is such a big deal.

With various social circles promoting all kinds of stuff and in fact silently dictating trends it is actually moving towards a prudent form of free advertising. And this had fortunately been found effective because people had been seen to patronize what had been promoted by friends, checked and visited places recommended by social ties for personal satisfaction and to serve as a topic for interaction within the circle. As a result, business industry had shifted its focus too on socializing, on choosing to place banner ads on Facebook instead of Google because of the strong impact of social influence on people thus percentage of getting a product patronize is higher. One common denominator though is that both are growing and so is the competition Google vs. Facebook.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads [Infographic]

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