So
by now it seems likely that everyone in the social space has heard about
Facebook’s Graph Search. There certainly
has been a lot of digital ink addressing what it means from an advertising
and/or privacy perspective.
As
an advertiser, I certainly understand the value of being able to target someone
based on what they are searching for now instead of based on what they
have liked or set up in their profile in the past. That ability to “pull” in clicks at the right
time is a big part of the reason Google’s Pay Per Click ads average a 1%-2%
click-through rate vs. Facebook’s current anemic “push” approach that only
averages 0.25%.
But
Google’s PPC ads also work because they are part of the “context” of an overall
Google search that offers an enormous amount of relevant information to the
searcher on the search results page.
This wealth of information ranges from location maps to pricing to
images to social outposts (including Facebook of course) that give the searcher
options to explore based on their intent.
How
is Facebook going to match this search user experience and expectation? If you have ever tried searching for something
or someone or some company on Facebook then you know that search experience was
clunky at best and a downright fail at worst.
And that’s the rub that I haven’t seen anyone else talking about.
Unless
Facebook Graph Search includes a significant upgrade of their underlying search
functionality, the use of this new feature will be limited and the professed
advertising bonanza will not materialize.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment