Google Adwords vs Facebook Ads

[rejoice]

My view is that Facebook is a much better avenue to advertise as it is a social site where more people spend more time on, so if one of your ads is taken on well by a group, it could be a better avenue for reaching a wider audience and generating more sales as people can discuss your product/service in groups or on a page you have created. Another advantage is that if you own a group or a page, Facebook gives you the option to allow comments being made attached to your ad (real live and always changing testimonials). What road would you take?

[jasaunders]

It all comes down to the intent of users.

If I'm a user on facebook, I'm there to connect with friends, view photos, and whatever else. I want to stay on that site, I am not looking at ads or looking to be driven away from the page I am looking at. It better be some damn good sales copy that's going to make me click an ad on facebook and divert my attention.

On the otherhand, if I am searching on a search engine, my intent is to find information on a topic. So if I search and a related ad comes up, I am much more likely to click it.

My click thru ratios on facebook vs. search engines have validated this. CTR's on facebook are incredibly low, most of my ads have been below 0.1% (some lower than 0.01%).

[rejoice]

You do have a point there. I've just setup an Adwords and Facebook Ads account and am testing them both, we'll see how we go with that. I'm hoping to get a bit of community support in Facebook so hoping that is the better achiever, but if Adwords are sending the sales then I guess I'll have to bow down and accept that nothing is better than Google.

[gofrugal]

I tried facebook, but didn't work for me.

[gregdavidson]

Google Adwords seems like a better choice since most people that visit your website are actually looking for what you're offering. A lot of the clicks you get on Facebook might be from people who are just clicking for no particular reason.