Facebook advertisements are not so bad, in fact I find they are generally really subtle and unimposing, they just become part of the daily stream of my social graph updates.
I’ve experimented myself with a few ads recently for a project, and I found the demographic data Facebook provides pretty comprehensive for targeting just the kind of people you desire.
As an example I am currently targeting “liberal, moderate, and conservative men between 18 and 65 years old who are single, in a relationship, engaged, or married in the United States who like music production.” I’m not sure why I chose conservative men, as I look at it, in fact I should change that to cover perhaps more liberal minded folk and definitely include women too, however you get the point, the demographic is pretty neat, and my experiment is done.
I like the ads because I can pay for them on a per click basis and of course they are targeting people INTERESTED in what I’m selling.
I’ve used google adwords for literally years, since they were released actually in 2003, and as that system is also targeting contextually it makes for good conversions. However, I would say that google adwords probably would have more redundancy due to not all traffic landing on an ad placement zones to be totally pre-qualified.
I’m working with a new client now also to help them understand how they can use some of these technologies, the client works in the texas debt settlement and I spotted a competitor’s ad in my stream today, see below.
Pretty unobtrusive yet handy info if you are interested eh?
How do YOU feel about the ads in your Facebook Social Graph?