Google is from Mars, Facebook is from Venus

“Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man. His character determines the character of the organization.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Google was founded by Computer Science majors Larry Page and Sergey Brin (also a Maths prodigy).

Facebook was founded by Computer Science and Social Psychologist major Mark Zuckerberg.

Google is famous for making decisions from facts, logic, data & analysis.

Facebook is famous for its hacker culture of empowering teams to move fast and break things.

The DNA of both companies are fundamentally different – which has the flow on effect of influencing what both companies value and therefore how both companies reward marketers and advertisers.

What Google wants is different to what Facebook wants.

Google values the mathematical precision of driving by numbers – prove to Google that yours are the most relevant ads when it comes to Search, and you’ll be rewarded.

Facebook values the human quality of trying things and breaking things in teams (ie. relationship) then course correcting as you go.

Both values are reflected in their algorithms.

Search is about objective efficiency.

Social is about human connection.

Both are necessary and have their place.

The mistake for marketers and advertisers would be to take what we’re doing on one platform and do the same thing on the other.

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