In terms of total volume of text and banner ad impressions, MySpace and Facebook are the world's largest Web sites. If you run ads on Google or MSN, chances are many of your ad impressions happen on those sites. But in addition to the content-match inventory, MySpace and Facebook have proprietary, bid-based, CPC advertising platforms. In the next few weeks, I’ll introduce ways that you can use these new outlets.

How Do Social Networks Differ From Search Engines for Buying CPC Ads?

On search engines' content networks, your ad targeting is based on a match between your keywords and the text on the page where your ads appear. On social networks, instead of using contextual targeting, your CPC ads are targeted based on data in users' profiles. (This information can include everything from age, gender and location to parental status, sexual orientation, and employer.)
For example, when I am logged in to Facebook and I'm reading a message from my friend about his recent trip to Alaska, I still see ads targeted to my profile’s attributes (my age, gender, location, interests, etc.)—not ads about vacations in Alaska.

Otherwise, social networks are quite similar to search engines' content networks: they are auction-based CPC platforms. You enter an ad; some targeting parameters; a maximum CPC bid and a budget, and the social networks take care of the rest. 

Should You Advertise Directly On a Social Network?
Because the social network advertising platforms are new, don't expect the breadth of features and conveniences available in AdWords. It can take considerably more work to manage your CPC ads on these newcomer platforms.
Before you begin advertising directly on a social network’s platform, you should determine if you can describe your target audience in terms of the targeting parameters available. If you are selling New York Giants’ jerseys, you have the ability to target your ads to Giants fans that live in the New York area. However, if you are a plumber, you might be better off staying with the search engines, because nothing in someone's social network profile is going to tell you that they have a clogged drain at the moment. As long as you are able to describe your audience in demographic terms, advertising on a social network will work for you.

How To set Up Your Social Network Ads
If you try to put out an ad with broad, sweeping targeting criteria, like “everyone under 18 in New York,” or “all men who have a college education and like Football,” you're going to have poor click-through rates, and your ads will stop getting impressions. For example, if you are a chiropractor with offices in Dallas, you might want to create ten different ads targeted to men ages 25-55 in Dallas, each targeted to interest in one of ten different sports, with ad copy like "Nagging Football Injury - see a chiropractor," "Nagging Basketball Injury - see a chiropractor,” and so on, for soccer, hockey, baseball, tennis, etc…

There's a very simple rule to succeed with CPC on social networks: Take advantage of all the targeting options, not just one or two.

In the coming weeks, I’ll discuss each of these topics — as well as tips for measuring the performance of your social media ads — in detail. And if you want more information right away, more extensive versions of these posts, are available on the Clickable Blog.