“IS WINTER COMING FOR GOOGLE? “ Report from an entrepreneur’s point of view
On April 27th, Francis Skipper, a digital marketing leader held an event to share his opinion and discuss the future of digital advertising.
He started the conversation by asking questions:“Now that Facebook and company are getting more screen time than Google, will social networks be the ultimate winners in the ad game? Is winter coming for Google?”
There is no doubt that social media is playing an increasing role in digital advertising. With so many successful social media campaigns, companies are paying more attention to build their brand in a social media way. However, most companies don’t have the knowledge to analyze the trend or the money to buy data. So they started hiring social media interns to test the water. Even the big companies are kind of far away from us, but looking at the trend can definitely help us find the right direction and walk the path more confidently.
Then he shared some facts “According to Forbes, Facebook saw a 61% increase in ad spend 2015 to 2016. The digital media giant accounts for 65% of total social network ad spend - expected to reach $36 billion this year. On the other hand, Google only saw a 20% increase in ad spend year over year. So, if and when you have to pick one advertising channel over the other, which one should you choose?”
We love data and facts because they don’t lie and we can see through them. Yes, Facebook saw a 61% increase in ad spend 2015-2016 while google only saw 20% increase. However, what’s the context? What’s the ROI for each? If google Adwords earns $30 billion per year and having a 20% increase last year is pretty good. If Facebook Ads have increased 61% from last year which the ROI in total counts $8 billions then we have two assumptions. Firstly, Facebook Ads was doing good last year and maybe they will have the same rate this year. Secondly, Facebook was doing badly in previous years, but last year they found new ways to achieve more and that’s why they had such a huge increase. Lacking in the context, the question is kind of misleading. So I don’t think winter is coming for Google.
Then he mentioned something interesting. Amazon is planning their ad platform which is brilliant. We know that Facebook and google have so much information about each of us but what about Amazon? They are so close to your decision-making phase because only if we want to buy something we go to Amazon. And they have your credit card info and they have 1 click! Even people don’t buy that much from amazon, but people still go to amazon for price compare. Here comes the business opportunity! We know that companies don’t really share data between each other even the are partners like provider and retailer. This is gold, especially for online providers and retailers. Even Amazon don’t share the date(like I said before). They can still track the data through their sales and Amazon category sales report and use the platform to better reach their target audience.
In the Q&A section, people ask what’s the solution to small business owners and entrepreneurs. there are two things I think very powerful. First, we need to figure out the rank, which means we need to prioritize the product and the digital platforms. How to build a small but cohesive campaign and make smart choices? We should start with the relevance and effectiveness. Second, we need to build different data models or choose measurement to actually track and measure the choices. It’s like “drug development”, we talk, we plan, we analyze. But at the end of the day, we have to actually execute it to see if it works or not. And the most efficient way to do it is to prepare, track and analyze.
Takeaways:
- See the trend through data.
- Analyze the data with a context
- Amazon can be a special social AD platform
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