Google + ... the best for brand advertising !

As stated in the previous article, there is a definite winner. Google + would also be the winner to convert brands to it.

1- Facebook has a low CTR (Click-through-rate) on ads which makes it unattractive for paid search ads driving to Facebook. The adverts that appear when needs arise are not relevant and so will be dismissed as unattractive to the user. Google is more efficient in its adverts model. Firstly Google adverts are much more measurable as to where the investment goes. Secondly adverts are ranked based on their relevance to the needs arising. This makes Google + more attractive for advertisers.

2- Everybody sees the brand differently. Brands can suffer from obsolescence if not changed or customized at specific periods, for instance seasonal chnages in adverts or advertising based on current events. That's why Google + is more relevant to advertisers as it allows a customization to meet individual needs.

3-In business if adverts cannot be evaluated based on investment value then it becomes unattractive as the manager cannot provide a detailed evaluation of tracking the investment. Furthermore information is power in business which makes Facebook unattractive as post click engagement of non-Facebook ads driving to Facebook. Again Google + is more relevant and useful to marketers here.

Following is an example of a Google + brand page for Coca-Cola :

An overall fight with a definite winner ...

As follow up to Stefan's previous article, let's compare Google and Facebook but not only as social networks but as whole companies on 3 key topics : Number of users, revenue and number of employees.

Users :




As of may 2011 google was the first to go over the 1 Billion of viewed pages (shortly followed by Microsoft webstites (905M)). Facebook ended up 3rd with 713.6M. In the US, their results were closer because as of may 2011, the score was of 155M for Google vs 140M for Facebook.






Revenue :



According to the Wall Stree Journal, Facebook Advertising revenue were of 1.86B$ in 2010 and should be near 4B$ this year. On the other site Google generated 29.3 B$ in revenue in 2010 (and not only from advertising !). Google is definitely ahead on this matter.






Employees :

According to the New Yorker, Facebook had about 2500 employees (2 times more than at the beginning of 2010). Google has now more than 24 000...

Work conditions and salaries are generous in both cases..

Salaries

Here’s a look at how median annual salary ranges for jobs at these two companies compare, according PayScale.com. Google pays more, overall.

Account Manager
Facebook: $33,876 - $66,027
Google: $43,999 - $111,572

Administrative Assistant
Facebook: $26,500 - $52,700
Google: $29, 368 - $62,584

Software Engineer
Facebook: $49,204 - $117,705
Google: $72,719 - $141,168

Sales Associate
Facebook: $26,100 - $59,300
Google: $23,977 - $66,899

Google employees also make more money out of the gate.

Median Starting Salaries
Google: $82,600
Facebook: $59,100

Percentage Above Market Pay for the IT Industry
Google: 23%
Facebook: 13%

Perks

Both Facebook and Google employees report being extremely satisfied at work. Perhaps both companies earn brownie points with their employees by providing cool perks.

Facebook
• Free beverages
• Flexible schedules
• Cell phones

Google
• Meals
• Daycare
• Pets at work


Even though Google + as a Social network still does not really stand up, as an overall company Google is definitely far ahead. The Challenge for Facebook will be to differentiate itself by entering new activities (e.g Music Market with partnerships with Spotify) and to keep innovate with a special focus on user privacy..


Sources: http://frenchweb.fr/google-vs-facebook-les-chiffres/

http://blogs.payscale.com/salary_report_kris_cowan/2011/07/facebook.html

The Cold War

Time seems to prove that Facebook and Google are engaged in a long lasting rivalry with an unknown issue. At first hand we can be mislead by thinking that Google and Facebook are offering complementary services and that those two giants are not really in the same field of expertise. Indeed the two companies have built their core businesses on different areas of the internet, one on search (Google), the other on social networking (Facebook). But limiting the comparison between these two to this judgment couldn’t be more wrong. As we are going to see, Larry Page – Google’s founder and CEO – and Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook’s founder and CEO – are engaged in an internal war of an intensity rarely seen before in the Silicon Valley. The fight will result on who will shape the future of the web. For now, the only outcome we can be sure of is that consumers benefit from better services from both companies compared to only one year ago.

The Strategy

There are two different points of view based on the same assumption, everything on the web starts by a search. From this basis, Google and Facebook have built their success on different strategies. Google bet on the fact that as users we want to make our own research based on what we want (i.e. if I want a new pair of sneakers, I am going to search for it). Facebook on the other hand foresaw, or rather provoked the change of we how use the web. I don’t search for the pair the sneakers I want, I wait for my friends to tell me what to buy. It seems that each company is trying to get closer from the other by “stealing” each other’s ideas.

Advertising

Both companies want to generate profit through their advertising strategy. Google is the worldwide leader in this field since over the 31 billion dollars engendered by the U.S. online advertising market; it almost grabs half of the market with 41% of the total market share. However, Facebook is becoming an increasing threat for Google as the search advertising industry is slowing and is focusing more on Facebook with a database of more than 800 million people who are spending more time on Facebook than on any other websites. Therefore, Facebook’s revenue from advertising is forecasted to grow by 81% this year compared to only 34% for Google.

Email

At the end of the year 2010, Facebook entered a face to face competition with Google with the launch of their own email address offering its users to create their “facebook.com” address while Google already battles in this field with its Gmail service. We have previously seen that Facebook users spend a huge amount of time on this website, and the facebook.com email address was created in this matter since in 2009 people spent only half as much time on Facebook as they did on Google. Facebook believed that with an email address on their website it will increase the amount of time spent on the website generating more revenue from advertising. We can now understand how everything is closely linked between those two Silicon Valley success stories.

Social Network

Here, Google turned to offense after the few strategic moves from Facebook with the creation of their very own social network Google +. As you all know Google + opened up to everyone in September after a trial period used to increase users attention and inputs to improve their service. Although it is very unlikely to see the 800 million Facebook users shift to Google + service, Google is clearly representing the main competitor for Facebook since it overcame MySpace (see our previous article). Google + benefits from a tremendous promotion made possible through all Google’s websites. We all know that the next step of the social network battle will be on the mobile market. Here again, Google with its Android phones is able to build many features for Google + directly on users’ phone. In response Facebook is trying to set an alliance with Apple – another historic rival of Google – and its Iphones to counter the recent moves of Google. It seems that Google wants to implement their Google + service in all the aspect of the company and not only limit it as a simple social network. This why Facebook reasonably fears the new service from Google as they don’t have the same back up as Google has.

Google and Facebook are competing on many other levels, but I decided to focus on the subjects we already talked about in our blogs. Have a look on this last chart (a bit outdated since it was in 2010 but still interesting). And feel free to read the articles with the links below for more information. 

(2010)

Cheers!

Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703326204575616672123580274.html

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/03/technology/facebook_google_fight.fortune/index.htm

Information is power

Information is a vital element in everyday-life communication. Social media has been able to bring communication to absolutely new level significantly enhancing consumer decision making process.

Living in the technology-driven world, obtaining information digitally has become a fundamental part of the decision-making process. Existence of smart phones has allowed making a comparison, drawing a conclusion and undertaking a purchasing action with a simple scan touch. Social media transformed barcode scanning application into the ‘social scanning’ that helps users immediately get an access to the relevant information regarding pricing and characteristics of the competing products, and hence enabling them to make informed decisions and most importantly share the knowledge with the others through social networking distribution. This, in turn, allows businesses to measure consumers’ offline behaviour and improve their customer knowledge.

With the growth of Internet and the volume of information distributed, online search becomes extremely complex and often time consuming process. Realizing that, social media players decided to transform Internet search into intelligent information discovery. Online services of questions and answers evolved into high-scale information based platforms for accumulating knowledge in an organized way. Great examples are Quora, Ask.com, Swingly and Google’s Aardvark, who aim at enhancing information exchange through social interaction by providing socially relevant answers.

Social entertainment and location check-ins are another trend in modern online communications. These social networking services give opportunity to exchange information regarding peoples’ social activities and thus, outline patterns of consumer lifestyles. Entertainment check-ins “enhance the social experiences around television, and potentially inspire new audiences to tune into trending or friend-approved television”. On the other hand location based information services such as newly launched location check-in by Facebook and Google Latitude give opportunity to track the places visited, count time spent at each place and display information on statistics such as "Time At Work", "Time Spent At Home" and "Time Spent Out".

Given importance of information in making sense of the environment, an obvious fact is that the sphere of communication has expanded dramatically. Social media age has unquestionably redefined the way we obtain information.

Read the original article written by Jennifer Van Grove on Mashable Social Media

http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/top-5-social-media-trends/

Advertising Strategy of Facebook

Facebook and Google are competing a lot as of today, and in its new advertising strategy, Facebook is taking a leaf out of Google’s ad strategy and implementing it to its social media.There has been a constant attempt from Facebook to innovate time after time and advertisements are no exception to that. But the beauty with Facebook is that it has slowly transitioned from advertising as a message-delivering medium to a platform for social sharing. Needless to say it has been a radical approach. Now the Facebook advertising solution encourages the brands creating ads to make better “social media” relevant ads which can make its Facebook members to recommend and also share it with their friends.

When comparing Facebook with Google, one has to remember the past when Google had a choice to take money from advertisers to display their pages higher in the search ranking, but it decided to go the other way and in fact made the search engine as best as it could be. Intially, when Google was launched, its founders had no idea as to how they would make money. All they thought was that if they get in more people to use their product, eventually they would figure out a way to earn money. And it was exactly what happened.

Similar to google, Facebook too didn’t create a new category on its own but actually refined an existing category namely the social network.. Like Google, Facebook figured that if it got enough people in its network and if it improved its social network continuously, it would eventually figure out a way to earn money.

Initially Facebook made a mess of of its advertising strategy by introducing Beacn, the advertising platform as it informed friends of every purchase that one makes. Facebook has since realised its mistake and is moving towards the correct direction.

With the advent of time, Facebook’s ad strategy is slowly becoming clearer. Actually, Facebook’s strategy, like Google’s, is to not only improve its social network, feel and experience, but also to improve the advertising as well. Facebook allows business brands to create their own brand page free of cost and doesn’t make a dime on any of the pages set up by advertisers. As a marketer, it may seem that all is well for them as they have got a free brand page without spending any money. There may be a thought as to why one should spend for Facebook ads. The reason one has to buy ads on Facebook goes to the heart of why one needs to advertise in the first place. A simple reason is that a brand has to grow and reach out to new audience who have heard little or nothing about it. One can get only so far keeping their base happy. What one needs to do is to reach beyond them.

The best way to do this would be to approach friends of that base. Why? It’s because friends tend to have a halo effect on their other friends and can influence their decisions too.That’s the thinking behind two recent announcements from Facebook. One is a new ad unit The other is a set of metrics that will help administrators create better brand Pages.

The combination of the two reveals what Facebook’s future strategy looks like. Facebook is actually putting pressure on advertisers to create better content for their brand Pages. If they do, those brands will have a better chance of winning over friends of fans either by advertising or by creating something viral. Henceforth, brands will be friends or friends of friends rather than being a spammer and trying to bombard the consciousness of random target audience.

Social networking is still new, but so was search engine once. While figuring out how to make money off of search seems obvious in retrospect, it clearly wasn’t at the time of its inception. In the same way, someday we will look back at how Facebook invented social media advertising and wonder why no one thought of it sooner.

Source : http://www.scoop.it/t/media-representation/p/512325505/facebook-s-new-advertising-strategy-is-brilliant-and-unexpected

Driving out the Competition

So, what are some of the differences between these two social media superpowers? Google+ and Facebook are in competition to gain costumer value. But what is it that they offer which differentiates themselves? We can take a look at the two companies and analyze their antes, neutrals, distinctions, and most importantly for this topic, their drivers.

The Antes: Antes are the features of Facebook or Google+ that are just common expectations. These features aren't what is going to attract millions of consumers but they are necessary. They can almost be considered a "prerequisite to competition". In our case, both Facebook and Google+ have the chat option. You can talk with your friends online in real time. Am I, the consumer, running to a social media platform because they have a the chat feature? No way. It's too commonplace. However, am I avoiding a certain social media platform because they don't have the chat option. Absolutely. That's why I say antes are a prerequisite to competition. There must be a chat option for me to even think about using a certain platform. Of the four categories, the antes is where we will see the most characteristics. My reasoning is because whenever there is a successful differentiation within this industry, the rest usually can quickly and easily copy that feature. Other antes for Google+ and Facebook include uploading photos, commenting, video calling, etc.

The Neutrals: Neutrals are the features that aren't very important nor different in the consumers eyes. It's difficult to find many neutrals for this industry. Since Facebook and Google+ both want to make themselves distinct platforms, then they would want to eliminate those features that aren't very important to a consumer and that don't differentiate themselves in anyway. They want to provide a sleek and streamline platform that is not bogged down by features that won't even be used.

The distinctions: These are the features which differentiate the two platforms but aren't very important/relevant to the consumer. For example, on Facebook, i can go and "poke" someone. I can't do this on Google+. No other social media platform allows you to poke someone. However, I have never poked anyone on Facebook. It's not very important to me. Of course it's a differentiating feature for Facebook but if they were to disable this feature tomorrow I would not even notice. It's a distinguishing mark but not an overly attractive one.

The Drivers: These are the most influential features that Facebook/Google+ can provide. These are the features that differentiate the two and that are very important to the user. These are what bring the largest quantity of users. Here are some of the most obvious differences: How you manage your friends is a very obvious difference. On Google+, you can arrange your friends into different circles where as in Facebook you can also arrange friends into different lists but it is not really promoted. What makes this a bigger difference is that you can more easily share photos, messages, videos, etc., with only these circles of friends on Google+. Another driver for Google+ is their advancement in video calling. In contrast to Facebook, you can leave a video message on Google+. A more abstract but hugely influential driver that puts Facebook in favor is simply the amount of users on Facebook. Facebook still dominates in the amount of regular users. You can't fully use the features on Google+ if there aren't as many people to use them with. For example, I am driven to Facebook because I know there will be a full list of people to chat with right now.

As Google+ gains steam and adds users, the circumstances will change along with the antes, neutrals, distinctions, and drivers. All we can do is sit back and enjoy.

Sources:

http://bostinno.com/2011/07/11/google-versus-facebook-pros-cons-infographic/