[redxaxder]

> "I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive."

If you've collected marketing data that tells you your conversion rate among pet owners is 2% when your conversion rate among the general public is 1%, then you know that every ad you show to pet owners is going to have twice the impact on your bottom line.

Ad targeting enables you to collect this kind of data and to exploit it once you have it. If you find the right audience, your advertising dollars can go more than twice as far.

[onemoreact]

Unless it cost your more than twice as much for that advertizing or your showing the same add to the same person several times (ex: hulu).

But, the real problem with facebook users is you are far less intrested in adds while on a social website and a lot of clicks are simple mistakes.

[uxp]

Buying a sponsored AdWords ad on Google results in people viewing it while they are actively looking to solve a problem or buy a product.

Buying an ad on Facebook that happens to be related to something they once had interest in, and may still do, will result in it being shown while they are not always looking to solve a problem or buy a product, but to entertain themselves, and most importantly may not care about that subject at that moment.

Online advertising is not a cut and dry field. You can get great results from either place, but you won't get the same results from both, at least in my experience.

[juliano_q]

The thing is that Google dont kneed to place ads on Google+, but they will know your personal information and place better targeted AdWords for each person.

[janesvilleseo]

Ding, ding, ding.....we have a winner

[kingnothing]

From my experience as a Facebook app developer for household brands, Facebook ads are one of the most effective methods of marketing today. Across all of the IP we manage, our company is behind over 800 million fans, likes, and shares, and a significant portion of that was generated from those ads.

[jasonparallel]

Have you been able to calculate the value of a like and a fan?