Why Googleplus, Facebook minus?

Google+Facebook+User= $

On the internet, traffic means money and power. This traffic has to be qualified, as there are many forms of fake traffic, such as spam bots. Over the past decade Search Marketing has matured, and most companies have been using the like’s of Goolge’s Adwords to drive traffic to their sites. This is why the budgets that use to go to television advertising has dried up, and Google have licked it up. But now the market is maturing, and this is why Social is becoming more important.

Search Marketing is about to peak. Many of the most valuable key terms which influence paid search, is becoming insanely expensive. What led advertisers to move their spend from TV to Search was the ability to catch the potential customer during the buying cycle. The allure was this highly targeted for of advertising where you only pay if the prospect shows an interest. The interest shown was in the form of a click. And thus PPC became dominant. It may be loosing its allure...

There has been a tremendous increase in click fraud, where some competitors may even use bots to “click” on your adverts, just to drain your budget. When posed with an alternative, a method of advertising where each and every individual’s demographics can be harvested to deliver advertising to just the right customer, Advertisers will take note.

This is exactly why Google+ has been taking on Facebook head-on. They do not want to loose out. A qualified user clicking on an ad may end up becoming the only form of PPC as click fraud increases. Where SEM use to focus their entire advertising budget on Google with a little Yahoo and Bing for flavour, the past year has seen an interesting move. Budgets have been divided between traditional Search and Facebook.

Qualified, signed in users, does not mean that it will be impossible to create a new kind of user fraud. It is very possible that black-hat marketers are developing bots to control Social Media accounts. We know that a host of Twitter bots are available. To the point where twitter has banned the use of these should they charge. Twitter wants the money, but they also want to keep the bots out.

We have seen Google+ being very aggressive with fake accounts. TO the point where even William Shatner’s real account was shut for a while. The game is on, but the question is: “who will garner the most real, qualified, traffic.”

Judging by the way Google+ seems to be employing the winning tactics from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, my bets have been made. Next week I will go through this statement, this step by step, to show you where Googleplus is getting it right and Facebook is loosing out.