Facebook vs Twitter: Which is a better option for advertisements?

Social media sites often add and improve their paid ads platforms offering advertisers to choose how and where they want to advertise. Facebook and Twitter the are senior class of social networks with a large user base, outranking various other sites with almost similar functionalities. It is for this reason that marketers look for strong message through their ads on these two most popular social websites. Now, often this leads to a dilemma for marketers of choosing which of the two. 

I. Introduction

• Ads displayed on Facebook or Twitter platforms serve similar purpose, seek to achieve similar goals and function almost in a similar way
• But, by using both as a medium may end up targeting many of the same users, just on different platforms with double the expenditure.
• It is here that marketers look for a concrete answer: Which is better for me: Facebook ad or Twitter ad and why? 

II. Overview of the Revenue Models

A. Twitter Revenue Model

Model 1:

• The most important model for Twitter to generate money is through its onsite advertising which comprises 85% of its revenue share. 
• It includes promotion of a tweet, promotion of a full account or promotion of a trend.
• Mobile devices account a whopping 65% of the this advertising revenue.

Model 2:

• One another way Twitter uses to attract advertisers is through data licensing.
• twitter sells the ‘firehose’ or its public data (from its 500 million tweets per day) to large companies.
• Google and Microsoft Bing also pay to twitter to license firehose so that they can include those tweets in their real time search results. 

B. Facebook Revenue Model

Model 1: Advertisement: 85% share in Revenue

Model 2: Other Sources: 12% share in Revenue

Model 3: Recent Innovations

III. Facebook vs Twitter: A comparative evaluation

A. Users

• Facebook has almost 5 times as many users and 10 times as daily shares as Twitter.

B. Ad Performance

C. Mobile Ad Performance

• Mobile devices are the future of effective marketing and tapping this resource is ideal for the advertisers.
• Facebook holds 15.8% of mobile ad market share as compared to twitter holding 1.85%.
• Facebook earns 41% of total ad revenue from mobile in contrast to twitter who earns 50% of ad revenue from mobile ad.

IV. Observations from the Analysis

A. Facebook

• Greater Reach than twitter as it has bigger user base.
• Growth rate of monthly active users is greater for Facebook.
• Advertisement on Facebook is economical  as compared to twitter.
• Has bigger portfolio of types of advertisement.

B. Twitter

• Click through rate of twitter is higher than Facebook.
• YoY growth rate of RPV for twitter is 300% as compared to 29% for Facebook.
• Growth of social share for twitter has increase by 258% as compared to 20% for Facebook.
• Good for conversion on branded products.
  

V. The Final Verdict

• Based on the research and various literature review on viewers' perception for the two sites, a following conclusion can be derived.

• Facebook ads are the advertising platform to go with. It has a better chance of getting ad money.
• Facebook is looking good to attract advertisers with established brands: mostly apparel, sports items etc. It has seen around 275% increase in click though rates and almost 40% decrease in the cost per click.
• Some specific areas are largely dominated by Twitter (see table above). They are very good in brand building and conversion for high involvement products.

VI. Reasons for Facebook's dominance

• Facebook’s Ad Manager App allows building ad campaigns from smart-phone application, but Twitter’s only shows updates and trends about your ads.
• Targeting a particular set of audience is tougher in case of Twitter as users only share name, username and phone number while creating a Twitter account.
• Advertising cost for promoting trends costs $200,000 currently which is not affordable by most businesses.

VII. The Way Forward

A. Facebook

• It needs to work on ad fatigue or blindness for users, as they can identify the difference between ads and posts easily in a glance.
• They should make shorter options for ads affordable as currently only long ads campaigns (>1 week) are preferred due to cost factors (lesser CPC). 
• They can also have something like verified ads where the offers, discounts and promotions advertised can be verified and notified to users by a tick mark. 
• They can charge users a premium to not display any ads for a certain duration of time (monthly/yearly) which is also a source of revenue through ads.

B. Twitter

• It needs to promote the TV targeting which is about promoting tweets to people engaged with specific TV shows in a real-time environment that is unique to Twitter. 
• Many other revenue models on lines of Facebook can bring a great share of advertisers' money to the website.

VIII. Conclusion:

• Facebook wins the battle on many fronts to attract advertisers’ money with Twitter not far behind.
• other sites like Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram are getting into the business quite rapidly to get a larger share of the pie.
• The war for advertisers’ money is going to be played in a much more innovative way.
• The uniqueness of a particular website that brings in more users and with them comes advertisers.
• It is important to be innovative, be competitive but most importantly be what users feel you are!

Technologies of the Future

The last few decades saw the rapid pace with which the technology has changed itself. Several new ideas transformed our world and also revolutionized the way we live and work. Let us foresee some technologies that have the potential to make money in future.

I. Introduction

• In the year 1950, a person could expect to live less than 45 years but today human life expectancy is well over 70 years and expected to rise even further.

• There is a complete shift in the way we greet, share, transact, communicate, read or even date. 

• Many new technologies have appeared in the past half century that it’s impossible to list them all.

• In future, technology will get even better and will change even faster.

II. Technologies yet to come

• Self-Driving cars, 5G network, crypto-currency etc. are soon going to be a part of our lives. 

• Many more great ideas are in pipeline at different stages of development. 

• Let us now visualize on such emerging technologies that will make money in the future. 
  

1. De-extinction: Creating an organism, which is either a member of, or resembles an extinct species, or breeding population of such organisms. Cloning is the most widely proposed method, although selective breeding has also been proposed.
2. Li-Fi: A wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using Visible Light Communication (VLC). Scientists have reported that they can achieve data transmission that is 100 times faster than current average Wi-Fi speeds.
3. Life Extension Science: This technology will slow down or reverse the processes of aging to extend both the maximum and average lifespan.
4. Brain Reading: It will use the responses of multiple voxels in the brain evoked by stimulus then detected by fMRI in order to decode the original stimulus. It then creates a literal picture of the image that was presented.
5. Caseless Ammunition: A type of small arms ammunition that eliminates the cartridge case that typically holds the primer, propellant, and projectile together as a unit.
6. Synthetic Meat: It is meat grown in cell culture instead of inside animals. Cultured meat can be produced using many of the same tissue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicine.
7. Cloaking Device: A Stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum.
8. Artificial Gravity: An acceleration resulting from the application of a force. In the context of manned spaceflight, artificial gravity may alleviate the adverse health effects of prolonged weightlessness.
9. Swarm Robotics: A new approach to the coordination of multirobot systems which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior will emerge from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment.
10. Fusion Rocket: A theoretical design for a rocket driven by fusion power which could provide efficient and long-term acceleration in space without the need to carry a large fuel supply.
11. Ionocraft: A device that uses an electrical electrohydrodynamic (EHD) phenomenon to produce thrust in the air without requiring any combustion or moving parts. it is not an anti-gravity device; rather, it produces lift using the same basic principle as a rocket. It will be used for better flying transportation.
12. Vactrain: It is a design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev (magnetic levitation) line using partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. Reduced air resistance could permit vactrains to travel at very high speeds—up to 4,000–5,000 mph. If these trains achieve the predicted speeds, the trip between New Delhi and New York would take less than 2 hours, surpassing aircraft as the world's fastest mode of public transportation.
13. Smart Clothing: Nanoporous fabrics, miniaturized electronics and haptic feedback make for smart clothing that change color or shape and keep cool or warm as the need arises.
14. Diamond Batteries: “Nuclear Batteries” formed by encasing radioactive waste into artificial diamonds that converts radiation into electricity. 

III. Conclusion

• Undoubtedly, the list is not going to end.

• What will come next will drive another of our imaginations to reality. 

• Forecasting the future of technology is for dreamers who hope to innovate better tools and for the mainstream people who hope to benefit from the new and improved