What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

Buying an ad on Facebook that happens to be related to something they once had interest in, and may still do, will result in it being shown while they are not always looking to solve a problem or buy a product, but to entertain themselves, and most importantly may not care about that subject at that moment.

Online advertising is not a cut and dry field. You can get great results from either place, but you won't get the same results from both, at least in my experience.

Why do people buy Coca Cola? Is it because of the tremendously expensive advertisements they put out or is it because the stuff is ubiquitous, tastes fairly good and is usually not surrounded by a lot of competing products at the places where it's sold?

Don't believe me? What about if you're in a restaurant that sells only Pepsi. Do you leave the restaurant in search of another that sells Coca-Cola? Most people probably don't, thereby proving that all the so-called "positive emotions" advertisements instill in consumers do absolutely nothing when the time comes to make purchase. Theoretically, yes, in a situation where you can choose either Pepsi or Coca-Cola for (roughly) the same price, Coca-Cola's advertising campain may have an effect, but such situations are exceedingly rare. In most purchasing decisions there are variables that have much more significance than the advertising history of the products.

So ads are, probably, not effective. And despite this fact, there has been an industry selling them for over a century and that industry has been getting richer and richer, thereby proving that you can perfectly well build a business on scamming people and keeping it up indefinitely. You do, however, have to keep playing around with some superficial parameters of your business model to keep it convincing. Which is exactly what Google is doing here.

(btw, I use - and love - Google's services, but never in my life have I clicked one of their ads or even looked at one for more than a split second)

Here's my 2 cents:

1) Cheaper than Adwords, much much cheaper. The ads tend to be expensive when you first get an estimate from Facebook, but in practice, this number goes down 5-fold. Also, in comparison to Adwords, it is at least 5-fold cheaper.

2) Easier to target people. This depends on what you are doing, but I believe it works better if you are trying to build a community with a specific interest. However, Adwords is probably better for targeting advertising for an e-commerce store.

3) If you advertise your fan page, you have a hook to constantly advertise to your fans. I like building my fan page, generating conversation, and sparking interest. It is important to give users good content, but it also doesn't hurt to self promote about 10-20% of the time. It all depends on what you are doing.