Nanigans, a performance marketing company, has released a study they performed on Facebook advertising. The study looked at over 200 billion Facebook ad impressions and found that the click-through rate is up over 375%$ from the third quarter of 2012 to the same time in 2013. The return on investment for these ads is at about 152%, which is quite significant as well.
The study links the cause of this huge growth over the past year to Facebook introducing in-feed ads. Having the ads displayed in the area where people are looking for their normal Facebook posts has obviously had a significant effect on the number of clicks marketers are getting. In addition, since people will only be clicking on the ads that they are interested in, having the ads displayed in this area has not, at least so far, reduced the return on investment marketers can expect from their advertising dollars.
Dan Slagen, SVP of Nanigans, said in an interview for VentureBeat.com, “Just 12 months ago we really weren’t having ROI conversations about social networking in general. And now we’re talking about Facebook in terms of performance marketing!” Many other marketers are undoubtedly taking a second look at Facebook ads for their performance and affiliate marketing efforts as well.
Other studies have shown that in-feed ads receive up to 49 times more clicks than those which are displayed to the right of the news feed. These clicks also come at about half the cost, which makes the news feed advertisements and extremely cost effective option for markets of all types. The latest Nanigans study, however, shows that clicks from ads on the right-hand side actually produce a higher return on investment. Marketers will have to look at their specific goals in determining where to have their ads placed.
The study produced a number of other interesting statistics, which marketers may find very interesting. For example, men click more ads than women, but make fewer purchases, leading to a 26% lower return on investment. In addition, older Facebook users can provide up to twice the return on investment as those in younger demographics.
