How Facebook and Google Changed the Advertising Game

A technological revolution is coming to advertising. Chatbots are replacing humans, data is threatening our privacy, and blockchain is connecting it all. In our series on technology and advertising, we look at how the industry is changing.

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Creativity and spectacle are becoming less essential than personal information used to target ads. Sponsored links in Google search or in the Facebook feed are very effective, but for a very different reason than your favorite TV ad.

When you think of advertising, you probably think of art. Memorable ads are often original, clever, or emotional. Something like big viral ad for australian beeror maybe something with Super Bowl.

These ads had a symbiotic and reciprocal relationship with the media they were displayed alongside. Major sporting events or television shows attract a specific audience, and ad agencies created a spectacle that matched that. It’s not a game anymore.

Google and Facebook dominate digital advertising

According to Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a group focused on the digital content industry, Google and Facebook have taken over all An increase of $32.7 billion in digital advertising spending in the first half of last year. The share of all others decreased by 3%.

Kinta’s respect came after earlier predictions Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak forecasts that about 85% of recent ad spending in 2016 will be split between the two companies.

Both Google and Facebook make money by combining user-generated content and personal information with advertising.

Google Search displays sponsored results along with other results in response to user queries. User-posted content on YouTube is often preceded by ads that mimic many of the traditions of television ads. Google-hosted display ads also appear on non-Google sites.

Facebook uses the information that users have given it, such as age, gender, relationship status, and location. The site uses this to display ads from advertisers who want to target people based on certain characteristics.

While both sites employ the same social signals, the process is often slightly different: Facebook monetizes personal data, while Google monetizes activity.

“Your Internet”

Unlike earlier forms of advertising that targeted generalized audience segments based on broad demographic characteristics, the advertising used by Google, Facebook and their competitors is more precise.

They employ certain actions (such as searching for “hotels”) or status information (changing your relationship status to “engaged”) to find people who are most likely to be interested in their chosen ads.

Recently, data generated in more passive ways—through everyday activities like commuting to work or cooking meals—is also being added to our searches and what we post on Facebook. This information is collected through home devices and wearables like Google Home and mobile phones.

All of this data generation and collection leads to personalization, or whatever. handheld device maker Jawbone calls “Your Internet” – “technology tailored to you, where your own data drives the experience.”

Ads are precisely targeted

The personalization and precision of these recent ads are changing the nature of advertising. It’s no longer about entertaining, delighting, or creating personal connections; it’s about precise targeting.

It’s basic to imagine gyms looking for recent customers by targeting people who have shown an interest in getting fit by tracking their online activity, but what about using step-counting devices to promote the shoes to people who have actually started walking a little more?

It is these types of data-driven ads that come from “Your Internet.”

These types of strategies raise arduous ethical questions about privacy and personal data because users may consent to data uses without actually reading or understanding long and complicated terms of service documents.

These approaches also challenge the common and understandable—if widely criticized—approach to financing online content through display advertising, as media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argues put it down:

We are not Facebook customers, we are a product. Facebook sells us to advertisers.

However, on “Your Internet” users may discover that they are Both the customer who purchased the product and the target of the secondary customer (advertiser) who purchased their data.

What does this mean for advertising?

With Facebook and Google dominating, many other online publishers are at a loss. They are struggling to find the “right solution to the substantial problem of generating payments for high-quality content,” because the founder of Medium recently stated that.

IN End of Year Update for marketers, Google has highlighted the biggest issue in this recent world – trust. Companies “must find ways to reassure consumers and position their brands as trustworthy.”

One way to create engaging and credible advertising is to show interest in what your customers already care about, which can be achieved by learning as much information about them as possible.

But if users find highly targeted ads creepy, or are unable to trust the devices in their homes and on their bodies, they may push back against the marketers who deploy them. That would force advertisers to turn again to content that works alongside the media they fund.