Ifelse NULL: obtaining numeric instead of string values

This seems to be very easy to do but I couldn't find an answer. I have two variables in my dataframe regarding Area names. I want to create a final Area variable using this two variables. If Area2 is missing then just use Area1 values but if Area2 is not missing the use Area2 values.

Area    Area2  Goal
ABC            ABC
ABC            ABC
AAA     AAA    AAA
AA-A    AAA    AAA
A AA    AAA    AAA

data <- data.frame(Area1 = c("ABC", "ABC", "AAA", "AA-A", "A AA"),
                   Area2 =c("", "", "AAA", "AAA", "AAA"))

My tried is below but I am obtaining numeric values for my final variable instead of string values (even using the as.factor option).

data$AreaFinal <- ifelse(is.na(data$Area2), data$Area1, data$Area2)
data$AreaFinal <- ifelse(is.na(data$Area2), as.factor(data$Area1), data$Area2)

Does this code look ok? In my real data Area1 is a factor and Area 2 is a character.

Thank you in advance! Marvin