We will experiment with Pay-Per-Click in social media (prediction #5)

Overall, Cost per Click (CPC) is on the rise. New customers’ engagement on the opposite (which we can measure as Click through rate) is relatively stable. One of the things some of us will be tempted to do in 2010 is to launch small Pay-Per-Click pilot across social media channels.

They offer lower CPC and decent targeting. Engagement levels are expected to be quite low. Mention Facebook ads to advertising executives and most of them will run away ‘’I have never given a dollar to Facebook, they have to improve their ad targeting’’.

Well, I am going to give it a try anyway, perhaps running a small ($10 a day) campaign and see how it goes. Facebook offers the ability to target ads based on customers’ demographics such as location, age, birthday, sex, education, relationship, interested in etc.). But the primary reason why I got interested in Facebook is the ability to trigger ads based on certain keywords users enter when they update their status. For more information, you can read this great article from Business Insider.

Very recently, I also discovered LinkedIn ads. What I like about the LinkedIn program is an effective targeting based on user’s industry, function, location etc. The estimated CPC seems to be a lot higher than Facebook, but still lower than Google AdWords. I wonder what sort of click-through-rates one can get. But again, only experimentation will tell.

Stay tuned as I launch small pilots for both Facebook and LinkedIn in February!