The New Age of Advertising: Facebook & Google

Jourdan Parkinson
Google and Facebook have both altered the the advertising industry by changing how we reach our target audience, and how we can do this in a very cost-effective manner. Google's major contribution to the advertising field came with the unleashing of a product called AdWords, which allowed marketers to bypass traditional advertising mediums and directly target consumers who were searching for something related to a specific product or service the marketer was selling. Google has served as the advertising platform for even rival company, Microsoft, who rely on Google's AdWords to successfully target consumers. Google has even forced other advertising outlets such as the television industry to be much more accountable and transparent in how they measure the price of advertisements, according to their actual effectiveness. 

Facebook has been the other main driver of change in the advertising industry since its launch in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student. Perhaps Facebook's most significant attribute is that it provides a rich amount of data on users that can be accessed by marketers Everything from their current interests, to a genre of movie that they are into would be accessible to a paying marketer. The growing accessibility of social media sites like Facebook raise notions that these social media websites may one day replace email all together. Users can access their profile from any smartphone, laptop, or tablet, and can reply instantaneously just like they were using email. The only difference: most young adults spend more time on Facebook than their email. Facebook also allows companies to build an online community and generate massive amounts of user-generated content, whether it be reviews about their products, or ideas for a new one. 

As social media continues to drive change in the way businesses reach consumers, Google and Facebook have served as the missing piece in Advertising, for the contributions that they have made thus far are profound, and as a result, the industry will never be the same.