Google AdSense Vs Facebook Instant Articles | Which One Is Best?

Facebook Instant Articles or Google AdSense? This is the most asked question from online marketers to social media experts and bloggers. We all know that currently, two major companies are running the whole internet world and i.e. Google and Facebook. Google is known to be a great source of information where Facebook is the top leader in Social Media.

Google release AdSense on June 18, 2003. Google AdSense is a program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video, or interactive media advertisements, that are targeted to site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. Where Facebook Instant Articles launched officially on May 12, 2015. Launch partners included Woven Digital, Buzz Feed, the New York Times, National Geographic, etc. We all know these giant companies Google and Facebook. In this episode, Abijita Foundation will discuss “Google AdSense Vs Facebook Instant Articles | Which One Is Best? “

There is basically two sources where you can drive traffic to your blog or website. One is from Google Search and another through Social networks. Adsense is the best way to monetize your blog or website through organic search whereas traffic is driven through Facebook, Instant Articles is the best way to monetize your articles.

If you are running a blog or website then there are two major sources to drive traffic to your site, one is organic traffic which is through Google search and another is social media traffic mainly through Facebook. If the visitors come to your website by google search, Adsense is the best way to monetize this organic traffic on your website or blog. So till now, we are clear that for organic traffic on the website Adsense is the best ad network for publishers to monetize the site. If you connect your site with Facebook Instant Articles then the link of your website article on Facebook will open in Facebook itself and Facebook ads will be shown inside that article. That means your social traffic will not see AdSense ads.

Monetizing With AdSense

Now suppose you are monetizing social traffic with AdSense only. So you put links to your articles everywhere on Facebook, people click on that link and land on your website and see google AdSense ads. So your revenue for social traffic will depend on how many people came to your website through Facebook? how many of them clicked on your ads and what CPC ( cost per click you got ). If your website article’s link reached 10000 people and only 2000 people clicked on that link then you got social traffic of 2000. When you post a link, after clicking on that link your website will load and open in the browser and it will take time. It will also take people from Facebook to your website.

This is why many people will just see the link and they will not click on it because it takes a time to load your website and also it will take them away from Facebook which they might not like it. So the disadvantage of using AdSense for social traffic is that less traffic will come to your website because many people will not click on links that will open in the browser. Now how much of that social traffic to your website will click on your ads. The Click-through rate will be between 3-8% depending on your ad placement.

How much cost per click you will get? This basically depends on your website niche and the country from which social traffic is coming. AdSense gives you money based on how many ads clicks you got. AdSense is the best ad network and it gives decent CPC. so you will earn a decent amount if users come and click on your ads.

Monetizing with Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook Instant Articles monetization starts once you connected your site with Instant articles. Your website articles will be pre-loaded on Facebook and when someone clicks on a link of your article then it will open instantly within a second on Facebook itself. So readers do not have to leave Facebook to read your website’s article. ultimately clicks on the link will also increase. Take the same example. Suppose your link reaches 10000 people on Facebook then at least 5000 people will click on the link and read your article.

Facebook pays you on a CPM basis. That means for 1000 impressions of ad it will pay your certain amount. This CPM also varies based on content and country from which traffic is coming. If 5k people read your article and two ads in the article then the total ad impressions will be 10000. So here every reader will contribute to revenue by giving ad impressions. This is not the case in AdSense. Only those readers will contribute who clicked on ads.

Facebook Instant Articles Vs Adsense Which is Best ?

We have cleared that for organic traffic always go for AdSense. For your social traffic, we yet have to decide what to use AdSense or Facebook Instant Articles. Both of it have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Using Adsense for Social traffic

• If your niche is having high cpc keywords then you must think for adsense. So there is advatege of getting high cpc.
• Aslo if your social traffic is coming from high cpc countries like USA canada then also adsense will be beneficial.
• You will get much more revenue compare to facebook instant article if you get high CPC and high CTR.

Disadvantage of Using Adsense for Social Traffic

• Even though your link reach is more on facebook very few people will actually click on that link.
• If your website speed is slow then also you will loose much of social traffic.

Advantage of Using Facebook Instant Articles with social traffic  

• Main advantage of instant article is, it opens fast. Many people will open your article. you will get more readers for your article if you use this.
• Facebook use CPM monetization. So every reader will contribute to you revenue. As your earning depend on ad impressions you don’t have to worry about ad click.

Disadvantage of Using Facebook Instant Articles with Social Traffic 

• You might get low cpm in facebook instant articles.
• Also as instant articles revenue does not depend on clicks so your revenue is only depend on volume of readers which is not case with adsense. In adsense you can earn with less traffic if your CTR and CPC is high.

The major drawback of Facebook Instant Articles is that you’re sacrificing referral traffic – giving up visits and page views that would have happened on your own site over to Facebook.

There’s a reason buying Likes is a fool’s errand. And we focus on recommending other ways to use Facebook advertising instead.  The same thing happens when you post content on Facebook. Technically speaking, it ain’t yours anymore. If you use Instant Articles, you have to be comfortable with the trade-off that while you’re going to get blazing fast articles, you’re also running the risk of losing that precious Facebook referral traffic back to your site.

For some businesses, that’s ain’t no thang (as we’ll explore in a second). But for others, like media giants who generate the bulk of their online revenue from ad-supported methods like display ads (yuck) and sponsored posts (bore), that’s an issue. When Facebook Instant Articles first launched, they managed to snare massive media companies like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and more.  Some, like Boston Globe, went ‘all in’ and published all of their articles to the platform. But after a few weeks, they started pulling back. Today, the Globe posts 0.0% of its content using Facebook Instant Articles. Their social media director, Matt Karolian, told Digiday: “We didn’t see a lift in engagement, at least not materially.”

Other early adopters have also been “cooling” over the past few months. Business Insider’s posting frequency has dropped from around 10% to barely 2%. The Atlantic said it was going to post as much as 85%, only to now post around 10%. According to Digiday and the NewsWhip analysis, the early Facebook Instant Articles adopters like BBC News, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal have all been “barely using the platform” recently.

So what gives? Should we be surprised that large media companies are pulling back on Facebook Instant Articles? No. If anything, you could question their original decision-making in putting so much of their content onto the platform in the first place. Anyone’s who’s worked on websites for a few years can tell you that when you remove or reduce referral traffic back to your website, especially visitors from a typically high-engagement platform like Facebook, your vanity metrics like visits/sessions and pageviews will fall. For most directly monetizing businesses, that’s OK.

For indirectly monetizing ones like large media platforms, that’s NOT OK. As they haven’t really figured out a better or more useful way to monetize audiences in most cases. So the higher engagement from Facebook Instant Articles don’t (can’t ever really) offset the literal opportunity cost of hosting that content on their original site and bringing as many users back as possible to drive up visits, page views, and therefore CPMs. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Facebook’s early results showed 20% CTR on mobile, 30% more shares, and a 70% decrease in the abandonment of Facebook Instant Articles.

Changes in  Facebook Policy

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently announced changes to the company’s news feed have the potential to dramatically affect how people interact on the social network. Over the next few weeks, Facebook’s news feed will start showing fewer news articles, and less marketing content and ads, Zuckerberg wrote on Thursday. Instead, users should start seeing more vacation videos from their friends, photos of their nephew’s college graduation, and other more family-friendly posts about the people they know. It’s a major change for Facebook, which over the years has shifted from being a social networking service connecting friends and family to one of the world’s biggest distributors of news and online ads.

Conclusion: So we have came to conclusion about Facebook Instant Articles Vs Adsense which is best? If your site is on a high CPC niche and most of the social traffic is coming from high CPC countries then don’t signup for Facebook Instant Articles. Because this is very high pay traffic. let them come to your website so that you will get a high CPC.

If your website is on a low CPC niche then even though social traffic comes to your website you will get very little CPC. In this case, use Facebook Instant Articles for social traffic which will increase your readers and the article will also get more share. So for low CPC niche social traffic, we recommend using Facebook Instant Article.