Google derives 99% of its revenue from the online advertisement services it provides. This has been its core business model which made it one of the largest companies in the world. Facebook has also appeared into the scene of online advertisement services as well, and with the rapid growth rate of Facebook users the advert service is very important to the company.
Nick O’Neil made a comparison between Social Ads (Facebook’s methodology) and Search (Google’s methodology) using Markus’ Social Ad experiment.
Which advert program would return a higher ROI for online Ads targeting the Nigerian audience, Google AdWords or Facebook Social Ad? Will the 212,000 Nigerians on Facebook be a better target than Google, with virtually all the 10 million internet Users in Nigeria using the search services?
To answer the question I launched two adverts for my school management software (SAF School Managemet Software) using both Google AdWords and Facebook Social Ad in the last 2 weeks and I found some interesting results.
Setting up the Ads
- To setup the advert on Facebook I created the Ad snippet.
- I then selected Nigeria as my target without filtering any of the terms.
- I submitted the ad for review which says it may take up to 12 hours before it starts. It kicked off in less than 3 hours.
- To setup the Google ad (starter edition), I created the snippet using AdWord tool.
For Google AdWords, your adverts will be displayed based on some keywords you select. The advert is displayed when users make search using similar keywords. Your budget determines how frequent your adverts will be displayed and whether it will appear more frequent on the first page or subsequent pages.
- I selected Nigeria as my target location.
- A one time activation fee of $5 is required for the Google Ads. I set my monthly budget at RM 60 (about $18) and for the cost-per-click (CPC) I let Google set my bids for best results. There is no any cost for the impression.
(* I was charged in Malaysian Ringgitt MYR; the only option offered by Google)
- I kicked off the ad which lasted between Jan 4 to Jan 15 (11 days which is same with Facebook).
Results
After 11 days of the campaign, there were 148,063 impressions and 120 clicks on the Facebook Ad, a 0.08% clickthrough rate (CTR). For the Google Ads there were 15,998 and 33 clicks – 0.21% CTR. The total cost for the Facebook Ad was $10.65 and Google Ad costed $6 (RM 20.39) plus $5 for the one-time startup fee (total $11).
The table below shows comparison of the two Ads.
Even though Facebook’s number of impressions greatly surpasses that of Google, the CTR for Google was better. This should be expected because Google Ads target interested users based on their search. You can target audience based on sex, age, education and other factors for Facebook Ad, however they are not specific like Google’s.
Depending on your target audience and what service you offer, the high number of impressions offered by Facebook can be advantageous. If your service is targeted for everyone, irrespective of sex, age, etc then you should expect high number of clicks since more impressions mean more reach out to your audience. Google’s less number of impressions could be a drawback here. However it is worth noting that there is cost for Facebook impressions but costless for Google.
There are many other factors to consider in selecting between Facebook Ad and Google Ad. You need to consider the class of people using Facebook in Nigeria. If your product is not targeted for that class then Google Ad is your best choice. Google Ad has no barrier and anyone can bump into it especially with lot of sites subscribing to Google AdSense. 10,464 out of the 15,998 impressions of the Google Ad were from these partner sites resulting into 1/3 of the 33 clicks.
Your budget also determines the performance of your advert. In this case, I see better results in Google Ads because of the limited number of Nigerian Facebook users to just over 212,000. Higher number of impressions would mean the same set of audience viewing your advert. For example, in this Ad there were 57,085 unique impressions which is about 1/3 of the total impressions.
Reports
Both Google and Facebook Ads offer comprehensive reports. Below is the report from Facebook Ad showing the number of Clicks against Time. Other reports such as Advert Performance and Responder Demographics can be exported in Excel format.
Google Ad report shows the number of impressions and clicks for a particular set of keywords and the corresponding costs.
A number of graphs are also available for the report as well as exports in Excel format.
Personally, I would always use both Google and Facebook Ads. The minimum budgets are fair and one has got nothing to loose in using both. I would also go for a higher budget, which should be proportional to the relevance of the product/service and my expectations from the audience.
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Faiz Bashir's Blog 