Hacker News Reader

Comment by elorant | Hacker News Reader

How exactly is Facebook better positioned? CTR for Facebook ads is abysmal compared to that on Google search.

People spend most of their time on Facebook products, especially on mobile - for example, in HK's public transits, it is not uncommon if you find over 70% of people near you are actually using Facebook products at the same time (FB/WhatsApp/Instagram)

I reckon if Facebook would add search to WhatsApp, it could hurt Google's ad income quite a bit.

Right now you have to close WhatsApp to start a search. And then come back when you have found the answer.

There is potential for Facebook for smooth search integration in its products and take bigger piece of the search-ad pie.

Now on Tap does that for pretty much any application though, if you've got Marshmallow.

That's the thing though, how many android phones are on mashmellow? A very small percentage.

Start a search and use whose API? Google has tens of thousands of people working on a top 5 difficulty problem with a 20 year head start. Facebook would need at least 10 years of trial and error just to make a dent.

Facebook has infinitely better targeting and signal about their users.

This is reliant on people continuing to use Facebook as their primary social networking tool.

What's done is done. Facebook won't delete your data, once U registered, give your gender/age, you are probably forever screwed, forever becoming a data point that waiting to be targeted.

In my environment (Netherlands) I'd say that WhatsApp is now the primary social networking tool for most people. I wonder how that is going to work out for Facebook.

Facebook bought Whatsapp two years ago.

Facebook owns WhatsApp. The question is what they are going to do with it. WhatsApp with end to end encryption seems to not allow for the type of monetization people are talking about here.

That's what I mean: how will they monetize it? They'll probably introduce business / bot accounts that they can monetize, but the encryption makes all sorts of monetization schemes hard - which is what I like about it.

Maybe it's possible to do ad-targeting on the client.

Google has context. You search for something, chances are you're interested in buying it. Placing an ad in the search page has better ROI for advertisers. At Facebook you can build loyalty which is a different beast altogether.

So is it safe to say that Google is better for acquiring hot leads, while Facebook is better for branding?

That sounds right.

Yes - also important to remember that Facebook has Instagram too, which is a nicer (imo) ad format and self selects for more affluent users.

Along those lines, Amazon is a much more dangerous competitor to AdSense than Facebook is at the moment.

Are banners/sponsored posts more efficient than purchased keyword? I would have thought someone searching on google wants to click, that's why he is on google for. Someone checking what their friends are up to on facebook is merely annoyed by unrelated content.

I don't see FB/G as direct competitors.

Google is good to sell products that are actively searched for.

People go to Facebook when they are bored. Facebook is great to sell products to people who are bored (various forms of entertainment products and services). It's also good to sell stuff people aren't actively searching.

So, depending on the product/service you are offering you can pick a different channel to reach your customers. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

Sometimes I click on those purchased keywords by mistake. Then get presented with the inevitable "could not connect to server" message because they use tracking servers which are blocked at the router level.

Main problem with advertising in general is more and more people are learning it's best use is as a signal of what not to buy.

Facebook on the other hand. At least can pretend it's something a friend is recommending. Although that is transparent enough to be even worse.

CTR = click-through rate

For the vast majority of advertising, CTR isn't terribly important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com