Is Social Ad Marketing Working for YOU?

Okay, the reviews are coming in – and they are certainly mixed! Are you finding successful ROI from your Google, Facebook and Twitter ad campaigns? Is it really worth the investment, or is social ad network marketing proving a disappointment for you?

Many marketers feel that when you build up an official presence in one arena and find success there, that you should also achieve successful results in advertising within that same market. Well, that is unfortunately not always the case. Google search engine listings and Google AdWords advertising has given many marketers proof of that theory in-action, while not nearly as many have seen joint success between Facebook fan pages and Facebook Ads – or similarly Twitter accounts and Twitter advertising.

I’m a big fan of eMarketer.com and investigate and pursue many marketing theories based on their research and reports. They recently observed that because of the huge success to marketers who have used Google AdWords over the years, many have had high hopes they will see similar results with Google+. Sadly, the experts believe that because of the social networking similarities between Google+ and Facebook, Google+ advertising will ultimately have all of the same drawbacks and benefits experienced with Facebook advertising. The problem, it seems, is not just in the type of people who use social networking, but the very behaviors of those individuals.

EyeTrackShop researched and published a study that tracked the eye movements [Do you believe they are an online eye-tracking solutions firm?] of Swedish participants on a typical Facebook newsfeed layout with all advertising placed on the right-hand side of the page. Then they tracked the eye movements of these same participants on a mock-up of a Google+ newsfeed layout – with, you guessed it, advertisements similar to those seen on Facebook on the right-hand side of the page. Google+ still does not feature ads, but EyeTrackShop added them in the mock-up so they could simulate and track user behavior.

Users viewed both pages in much the same manner, maintainign their focus primarily on the center of the page, moving to the left first, and then to the right where we know the ads were located. According to revenue estimates from eMarketer.com, Facebook will receive as much as $4 billion in global ad revenue for these ads, so if Google was to recreate the same format they could yield similar results. With the right-hand column being viewed last, however, Google+ may well want to consider placing ads in the left-hand column instead! All this from Eye Tracking

Real Results: Tracking Social Network Ad Engagement

Tracking eye movements of typical social network users is one thing, but tracking the engagement and activities of those users within the social ad network is quite another. How many of those users are clicking on the advertisements, watching videos, following calls to action or interacting with the advertising brands in some fashion? Share your real-world experience and results…