Wednesday, 12 Octorber 2011
Facebook ad click-through rates have increased 18.5% in the past quarter, according to an analysis by TBG Digital of over 255bn Facebook ad impressions.
The research, conducted by TBG Digital via its Facebook ad-optimisation tool One Media Manager, found that as the effectiveness of ads has increased, cost-per-click rates have fallen 10.8%, while cost-per-thousand impressions has increased by 7.1%.
According to TBG Digital, the increase in effectiveness has been due to improvements in Facebook’s ad offering and the increased use of its Sponsored Stories ad formats.
Sponsored Stories use information about your friends within the ad creative, for example showing that a friend has already Liked a brand, which TBG CEO Simon Mansel said delivers brands “paid-for word-of-mouth marketing at scale.”
According to the company’s data, this type of advertising is also attracting brand spend that has traditionally been allocated to channels such as TV. Brand spend via Facebook had increased 6.7% to account for 53.7% of the agency’s total Facebook spend.
Research from Efficient Frontier, which also runs ads via Facebook, said that spend on the site had increased by 25% in the past quarter, but unlike TBG Digital, it found cost per clicks had increased. It said prices had risen by 54% due to the increase in the number of brands advertising on the social network and increased competition.
