This is the real value proposition, Ben Thompson has a lot of good articles on the good and bad of Facebook. Radio and TV ads are expensive because they can only serve one ad spot at a time. Plus, my understanding from friends in advertising is that TV spots can become quite expensive as demand rises. You can get books which tell you roughly the cost of advertising for all different types of media.
Whereas at a single point in time, Facebook can sell many ad spots and allow individuals to target certain groups of people. Unsurprisingly, media thinks you can do very specific ad targeting but you can’t.. not to the level of doomsday-ness that people suggest. They’ve put limits on the min # of people you can target.
It is worth mentioning that FB’s ad bidding system is completely automated, so prices are almost entirely determined by demand and ad spots.
The other side is that, pizza business is not in the business of making a website or dealing with technology. They are in the business of managing a restaurant which is hard work. Anything that takes away technology work can be a huge plus for them, especially if they don’t have to manage it.
When I worked in a restaurant, it would be 12-14 hour shifts. Leadership would do those shifts nearly every single day putting out (non-literal) fires and keeping the ship afloat. You have to pick your battles carefully when running restaurant.
I find it painful when people say.. let’s just go back to the old form of advertising. Old form of advertising highly favored large conglomerates, because the ad spots were limited. Instead businesses had to rely on word of mouth.
But what if you are a small internet business making niche jewelry or whatever? Well, if you only rely on word of mouth you will probably saturate your customer base early. Instead if you could put out ads for your demographic cheaply across your entire country, now you are talking!
Does that mean FB is net good? I think that is up to the individual, I’m not going to tell people otherwise. But there is value there, and everyone should recognize that even if they don’t believe it is net good.