Twitter Advertising vs Facebook Advertising

In today’s tech savvy world, everyone is glued to their computer screens or their mobile devices to surf the internet. The Internet has become an important and efficient way in which to reach people. So consequently it has become a vital component for companies and brands looking to market their products on the Internet in order to get wider publicity.

Social networking sites play a major role in these types of advertisements. These methods of advertising definitely leave an impression on the observing public, and have been proven to be one of the most preferred and cheapest ways to reach people in modern times. Social Media in particular has emerged as one of the most popular means of free advertising for people who spend the time to establish contacts through the social media channels in order to promote products to followers and friends.

You almost subliminally  remember noticing an advertisement on the side bar of your Facebook page or on your Twitter profile. So in this article we are going to compare the advertising methods used by Facebook and Twitter to try to analyze which one is preferred and why.

Modes of advertising on Twitter:

1. Promoted Tweets
2. Promoted Accounts
3. Promoted Trends

Promoted Tweets: Promoted tweets are those tweets which are shown to users even if they are not following your account. These appear as  search results and are showcased in the same manner as regular tweets. When some users search for a particular keyword, these promoted tweets are displayed among other results.

Promoted Accounts: This has been an effective marketing tool used on twitter for a long time. Promoted accounts appear in the ‘Who to follow’ section of any user’s homepage. Twitter analyses your account and your followings to get an idea about your interests and then put similar accounts in your suggestions to follow box. So this is a user targeted tool for advertising.

Promoted Trends: This makes use of hash-tags used by the users while tweeting. User put hash-tags in their tweets so that other users who are tweeting on a similar topic can easily find them. When any user click on the hash-tags to access the conversation related to it, the promoted trends appear above all the other results.

Modes of advertising on Facebook:

Facebook follows a simple approach to advertising. This is where the ads appear randomly on the right sidebar of your page with other ads. Facebook helps the companies and brands to target any audience with a minimal number of words and a flexible budget. The ads should be short and can have a simple picture as well.

Facebook also support ads by designing specific pages related to that product. The company or brand has to make people like that page and, once they have, the information regarding the product would go directly to their inbox as messages. Moreover the advertisers can also virally promote their product by starting campaigns using these pages. This is a particularly simple method of advertising but does involve the relatively tedious task of getting people to visit your page again and again.

Now let us compare both the options:

1.      Who The Audience Is:

Twitter:

• There are approximately 175 Million users all over the world.
• Ads appear on the user’s feed which makes it more likely the people will notice them.
• Majority of users are aged between 26-44 years.

Facebook:

• There are more than 650 Million users at present which means a much larger user base than twitter.
• Ads appear either on the right sidebar away from major navigation links, which is rarely noticed or you can have a separate page which once accessed will definitely influence the user.
• Most of the users are aged between 18-34 years of age.

 2.      Targeted audience type:

Twitter:

• Ads are based on personal interests. So you either need to follow or search for it to see that ad.

            Facebook:

• You need not be a fan of that particular segment to view the ads. Though ads are more focussed based on your likes of previously shown ads.

 3.      Pricing:

Twitter:

• Uses a CPE (Costs per Engagement) model of pricing where advertisers are required to pay when their ads are favorited, replied or are clicked on by the user. Although re-tweets are free.

           Facebook:

• Uses CPC /CPI (Costs Per Click/Impressions) model where only clicks cost the advertiser.
• CPC is about 0.05$ to 0.85$ approx.

4.      The Analytics dashboard:

Twitter:

• You can monitor both paid and unpaid activities.
• Results are sorted as per campaigns.
• You can see which tweets caused more users to follow you, and also the most influential followers as well.

           Facebook:

• Reports on conversion time and other demographics.
• Results can be sorted by either campaigns or ads.
• This is comparatively less complicated than Twitter.

 

So which one is better and why?

Well it depends on which type of audience you want to target, what the advertising goals of the company are and how much time the company is willing to devote to interact with the consumers.

Twitter is good for those who are brand conscious and are loyal to their brands whereas Facebook is best for emerging companies who want to attract more and more new users who may not even know about their company. But the tough task is to create a separate page for your company and somehow attract the people so that they like your page and subscribe to your updates.

Facebook is great for small businesses that need to advertise for a short period of time and want to attract new users, whereas Twitter is basically open for large businesses that have a considerable amount to invest in their advertisement and want to target their loyal customers.

So the choice of the social networking site on which you should advertise depends completely on your audience and the amount of time or money you are willing to invest.