And the two giants are? You are right, Facebook and Google.

Globally, Facebook has about 2.2 billion active monthly users while the number of daily searches on Google is about 3.5 billion.

Depending on what you are trying to achieve with your paid ads, one is more suited over the other (Google Adwords Vs Facebook Ads).

Facebook faced tremendous pressures recently over the Cambridge Analytica data breach incident and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had even to testify in Congress. It was quite interesting listening in to some of these Q&A sessions in Congress as obviously not everyone understands clearly what kind of analytics Facebook is collecting from the users.

Personal data privacy is a real issue and internet users should protect themselves against all sorts of possible abuses. There are already many scams happening and hackers can cause mayhem.

As digital marketers, we know we need to target the right audience segments who may be interested in the products and services we are promoting and we know some of the tools which are available to us on Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.

For Google Adwords, we primarily rely on search keywords while for Facebook ads, we can define custom audience, lookalike audience and execute audience re-targeting through Facebook pixels etc.

Google owns YouTube and Facebook owns Instagram. YouTube and Instagram are also important advertising channels.

Is collecting useful advertising data from users wrong? What kind of data can be collected and what shouldn’t? I shall leave this to the legislators and other relevant parties to debate.

As users, I think we need to protect ourselves by having the appropriate personal data protection controls when using Facebook etc. Also, we must understand and decide what kind of posts we are comfortable to upload and share. Once uploaded onto the internet world, you know there is no longer any privacy.

As advertisers, whatever that is legitimate, legal and morally correct, we want to leverage on and target the right audience. So long as we are offering good products and services, we are trying to create win win relationships.

We consult on search engine marketing services and Facebook marketing, so feel free to contact us for discussions.