Bingo. I'm actually a bit surprised more people don't understand why this is the case and anticipate it.
Search is the optimal context for presenting an ad -- you have the chance to make an impression to a person who is looking for information about something right at that moment. If you can get the right ads correlated to the search terms, you're handing the user a URL to information they're already looking for.
In most other situations, ads are noise -- they're a distraction from what the user really came there to pay attention to.
In the case of Facebook, it's the user's friends and interests. Which means your real goal with a FB campaign is to get people liking/following you. Buying comes later.
100% agree. Even for interests, search is better. Google has a decade of my search history and much of my browsing history (via analytics). Even conversion history - what have I bought? FB has much less insight into my interests because there have been far fewer opportunities to learn about me.
Search is the optimal context for presenting an ad -- you have the chance to make an impression to a person who is looking for information about something right at that moment. If you can get the right ads correlated to the search terms, you're handing the user a URL to information they're already looking for.
In most other situations, ads are noise -- they're a distraction from what the user really came there to pay attention to.
In the case of Facebook, it's the user's friends and interests. Which means your real goal with a FB campaign is to get people liking/following you. Buying comes later.