Facebook ads vs Google Adwords

I have been a big fan of Google’s PPC advertising aka AdWords for a while now. There is no doubt AdWords advertising is ridiculously expensive but Google has all their math and technology worked out very well for this product to make sure that it’s a Win-Win for advertisers and Google. At the very end, if you spend $100 and get back $500 or $1000, does anyone really have a problem?
Recently, I ran a couple of Facebook ads campaigns to promote certain products – not necessarily related to what you see on DollarShower. And my second stint (after a while) with Facebook ads produced the following outcome – 1279300, 303, 0, 27.51. If you wonder what that means, it’s nothing but 1.27million impressions, 303 clicks, zero sales out of that and the budget was $27.51.

1279300, 303, 0,$27.51 vs 9955, 54, 4, $26.62

Next I resumed my AdWords campaign for the same product, similar ad text, almost same timeframe, same geo-targeting and similar budget but on a search based PPC basis. To be frank, I didn’t intend to compare these two initially and hence had to take a snapshot from the AdWords campaign report later. Google AdWords produced 4 sales out of the 54 clicks that my ad received for $26.62 with 9,955 impressions. How’s that?

Why your facebook ads won’t work in most cases?

First of all people are out there on a Social network site to socialize and not spend money on shopping online. Any conversion potential that might me there at all, is like once in a blue moon or one out of a couple of thousand clicks.
Secondly, in the case of Google, people are specifically searching with certain keywords that show their ‘intention to buy’ and hence you can specifically target such potential buyers easily.
Next, facebook ads are displayed somewhere there in a least preferred location whereas Google ads are mostly well blended into the SERPs and content.
Google ads are highly search context specific and where as facebook ads, while checking for demographics, cannot decide the context.
Facebook ads look way too decent and too less intrusive whereas Google ads lure you to click on them. I even wonder whether any human is actually clicking on any of my facebook ads or it is done by some bot, script or something like that.
Google makes sure that you get good quality clicks via campaign suggestions, bad-click corrections etc where as facebook ads are just dumb ads without much technical features for advanced users.