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The battle for online content domination took a new turn last week when online giant Facebook of Tunisia and Egypt revolutionary fame decided to take on Internet behemoths, Google and Amazon.
The bone of contention is a seamless operation that takes place behind the scenes and has been honed to a level that, most Internet users don't realize the billions of dollars that change hands when they simply use the internet.
Think of when you visit a web page including this one. On the right, you will see some adverts. These are served by Google and each time a visitor to this web page clicks on one of them, the advertiser pays Google a very small amount of money. Now, the interesting part is that Google uses its computers to scan all the words on this page, and serves ads relevant to the subject matter of the article. These are targeted ads. For example, if this were an article about the famous Cameroonian soccer star Samuel Eto, you might see soccer gear from Adidas or Nike advertised on this page. You get the drift.
Because ads served by Google are targeted and not just random, they are highly effective, and advertisers prefer to spend their money on companies that can advertise their products effectively. They don't have to pay a huge flat fee for example, as they would if they were using a billboard. They only pay when someone clicks on the ads, and then, the amount they have to pay is considerably less.
So Google has been making a lot of money using this strategy, making it one of the most successful companies ever.
Enter Facebook, with a rapidly growing number of users. They too quickly realized the money is to be made only when you have a real human being accessing the Internet. If no one turns on their computers, Google cannot serve ads and thus, cannot make money. So, they knew with their huge number of subscribers, they could leverage this mass, and leave a huge dent in Google's checkbook.
Now, they are entering the fray of online ads, and have published a list of websites that they have approved to serve ads on Facebook. It remains to be seen how good these ads will be. Google had so much success because its ads were relevant and heightened the Internet user's experience, rather than take away from it. People fear poor quality ads from newer companies with little experience may disrupt Facebook.
The next few days will tell and there will certainly be feedback from Facebook's users. It will be interesting.
The battle for online content domination took a new turn last week when online giant Facebook of Tunisia and Egypt revolutionary fame decided to take on Internet behemoths, Google and Amazon.
The bone of contention is a seamless operation that takes place behind the scenes and has been honed to a level that, most Internet users don't realize the billions of dollars that change hands when they simply use the internet.
Think of when you visit a web page including this one. On the right, you will see some adverts. These are served by Google and each time a visitor to this web page clicks on one of them, the advertiser pays Google a very small amount of money. Now, the interesting part is that Google uses its computers to scan all the words on this page, and serves ads relevant to the subject matter of the article. These are targeted ads. For example, if this were an article about the famous Cameroonian soccer star Samuel Eto, you might see soccer gear from Adidas or Nike advertised on this page. You get the drift.
Because ads served by Google are targeted and not just random, they are highly effective, and advertisers prefer to spend their money on companies that can advertise their products effectively. They don't have to pay a huge flat fee for example, as they would if they were using a billboard. They only pay when someone clicks on the ads, and then, the amount they have to pay is considerably less.
So Google has been making a lot of money using this strategy, making it one of the most successful companies ever.
Enter Facebook, with a rapidly growing number of users. They too quickly realized the money is to be made only when you have a real human being accessing the Internet. If no one turns on their computers, Google cannot serve ads and thus, cannot make money. So, they knew with their huge number of subscribers, they could leverage this mass, and leave a huge dent in Google's checkbook.
Now, they are entering the fray of online ads, and have published a list of websites that they have approved to serve ads on Facebook. It remains to be seen how good these ads will be. Google had so much success because its ads were relevant and heightened the Internet user's experience, rather than take away from it. People fear poor quality ads from newer companies with little experience may disrupt Facebook.
The next few days will tell and there will certainly be feedback from Facebook's users. It will be interesting.
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