132 Outs m ar t i ng S o c ial M edia Facebook Versus Google: The Battle for Your Purchasing Power It's strange to realize that Facebook was second to the online advertising innova- tion party. Google created AdWords in 2002, and with it revolutionized the adver- tising industry by allowing companies to show ads to users in response to specific searches. This meant that advertisers no longer had to wonder if the people view- ing their ads were interested in their prod- uct. They could literally show ads only to people searching for exactly what they sell. That is a powerful proposition, and the reason why Google is a far larger company than Facebook at present. "...as I've men- tioned many times in this book, Google is scared. The biggest threat to its AdWords product--by far-- is Facebook ads. But, as I've mentioned many times in this book, Google is scared. The biggest threat to its AdWords product--by far--is Facebook ads. That is because Google simply cannot target as specifically as Facebook can. In the previous example of the tween girl makeup company, which ad product would make more sense for them? Let's consider AdWords first. If a tween girl is looking for makeup, what exactly would she search for on Google? "tween girl makeup"? I don't think so. Probably something like "buy makeup," which puts her into a pool of tens of thousands of other searchers of all ages. More likely, she wouldn't search for anything on Google and would instead navigate to her favorite makeup site. Now let's consider Facebook Ads. We know that young girls are on Facebook-- most of them, actually. And many of them have already publicly stated that they like certain makeup brands. The company in question could run a campaign that shows ads to girls of a specific age who like Sephora. That is a much more targeted offering than anything Google has right now. The rub, of course, is that these young girls who like makeup--the ideal demo- graphic and psychographic for the example company--are not necessarily looking for makeup at the moment. If people used Facebook as a shopping search engine the way they do Google, Facebook would have it made. The moment these girls start looking for makeup, they could see ads from the makeup company. But alas, Google is still the place people go to search.