I have lately been in many marketing conversations related to search, social and mobile customer acquisition. When it comes to advertising, a diversified strategy is key to long term success, however, all advertising networks are not created equal. With Google recently announcing that 19% of their hotel queries come from mobile devices and Facebook marketers claiming social media ROI of upto 1000%, both mobile and social advertising are making inroads in advertiser value.
So, how does social and mobile advertising compare to search advertising?
Facebook advertising, mixed bag so far...
With over half a billion users, 250 million of which engage daily, and contributing on average 90 pieces of content a month, it's clearly the platform of choice for multi-billion dollar advertising by mega brands. The companies that have success on Facebook measure ROI through mostly soft metrics such as converting social media members to followers, increasing referral traffic and brand awareness. According to this Forbes article, Facebook claims that it is key and growing driver of online traffic to retailers. Facebook’s referral traffic to Amazon grew 328% year over year in Oct. 2010, while Google’s traffic dropped 2%. Facebook traffic to eBay grew 81% while Google traffic dropped 3%.
On the other hand, there remain a number of areas of performance, that Facebook is still behind compared to search and display advertising. Despite accounting for 20% of online advertising traffic, Facebook cost an average of $.56 per thousand impressions (which is below most search engine averages). However, the click through rate (CTR) for Facebook ads is half of the general web advertising average, which is effectively $1.12 equivalent CPM. Despite being a very cost effective advertising channel, the World Federation of Advertisers says that less than a quarter of companies that advertise with Facebook are happy with their ROI. Also, another study finds that overwhelmingly, consumers were more likely to visit a companies website (and search for it) rather then visiting their Facebook profile. Company direct emails (yes, those spammy ones), were considered a better more trusted form of communication then a company’s Facebook page.
How about Facebook referral traffic? Will Facebook-referred visitors turn into buyers at the same rate as visitors from Google? One would expect it to be a lower rate, since the intent of visitors coming from Facebook isn't as clear or uniform as that of Google-referred visitors. The same analogy also applies to gamers on the social networks. Popular Zynga games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars etc., have a large number of gamers. I haven't heard (caveat my limited exposure) of real success stories yet and it seems that the ROI on these social games is far from optimal at this point.
Mobile CPA model fast evolving...
There's a lot of optimism in the air around mobile advertising in publishing ― but how to measure a successful campaign is still evolving.
Reach is still the most important criterion for advertisers to judge success of a campaign. With mobile we can measure unique users much more accurately than with any other medium. Mobile offers the opportunity for the advertiser to the reach the consumer at the right time and the right place using the right medium with the right message.
However, a wide range of mobile surveys have concluded that a large number ( infact 47%) of mobile app users say they click/tap on mobile ads more often by mistake than they do on purpose. Clicks may not be an accurate metric for mobile advertising.
More recently, a large number game apps have started incorporating a CPA model. I recently downloaded a mobile game called, TapZoo. It had a built in call to action to get ahead and move faster to next levels. To navigate the game faster, you can either pay to get more coins/stars or download apps such as Groupon, LivingSocial etc., I tried downloading a couple of those apps but I find the lack of context, annoying (I guess you can tell that I'm a search person). I do, however, think that mobile networks will be able target better and also offer better metrics for advertisers in no so distant future.
Search - Steady and Effective...
Google with over two thirds of the search market share continues to deliver steady and effective results. Generally speaking, SEM & SEO provide the best 1, 2 punch on customer acquisition. Further, with social playing a big role in SERP's, SEO hones your social customer acquisition skills as well.
As much as paid acquisition is a necessity in the short term, one needs to have organic strategies for mobile, social media and search. Social Media consists of branded social community pages, social sharing, content distribution, publish video & assets to social portals, social display advertising and campaigns embedded within the product that can generate Facebook "Like" campaigns. These social media campaigns also help with SEO which enables you to reach broader mobile cusotmer segment as well.
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