For all of those digital media planners out there looking to defend your rationale to allocate budget in Facebook or Google. Please read the research from the folks at Wordstream comparing Facebook Advertising to Advertising in the Google Display Network. The research compares advertising reach, ad performance, revenues and growth, ad formats, and targeting options (all with a nice report card image)
Highlights of there research include:
- Facebook and Google both have huge potential reach, with Facebook boasting 845 million monthly active users and Google owning the world’s largest online display advertising network.
- The average click-through rate (CTR) of an ad on the Google Display Network is 0.4% – almost 10 times as high as the typical Facebook ad. Average CTR on Facebook is under 0.05%, about half the industry average for online banner ads. At the same time, costs per thousand impressions on Facebook are climbing.
- The Google Display Network offers twice as many ad formats as Facebook, including in-video ads, mobile-game ads, support for industry-standard image ads, and more.
- Facebook does not yet support mobile advertising and has more limited targeting options than Google.
