Is Facebook’s Enhanced News Feed(s) A Marketer’s Dream Come True?

By Greg Kunkel March 7th, 2013

A lot of people “Like” Facebook. According to ComScore, the social media behemoth ranked as the top destination on the Internet in December 2012, edging out Google. So, when Facebook announced changes to its News Feed, advertisers took note.

One thing that’s dogged Facebook the last year or so is the stigma that the social site isn’t ideal for performance marketing. While we certainly agree advertising on Facebook leans towards branding and it isn’t quite the performance marketing nirvana like search is on Google or Bing, our data hints at Facebook’s potential. In fact, in Q4 of last year, we saw US Facebook advertising take on search-like performance characteristics.

Today, Zuckerberg and company revealed a new News Feed. Pictures and videos will now not only be displayed more prominently, but rather than a single News Feed, users will be able to filter their News Feed by Friends, Music, Photos, Games and other topics.

It’s all in an effort to provide users “more choice and more control.” As a result, targeting and ad visibility on Facebook has taken a step closer to the performance marketing utopia. There are three critical changes that advertisers should be aware of:

1. Bigger, more visual oriented ads in the News Feed. Gone will be the bit of text and squished image underneath. Instead, it will be big and prominent. More real-estate equals better performance.
2. More targeting according to different News Feeds. Imagine instead of targeting an ad for a new album in the general News Feed, which would compete with every other ad, you’ll now be able to serve your ad for a new album to your target audience on a Feed dedicated to music. Relevancy just went up and people prefer relevant ads.
3. More ads! Facebook users will now not only see ads in their News Feed of choice, but upon navigating to a different Feed, they’ll be shown additional ads. These ad impressions would be incremental for advertisers. As long as it’s not too disruptive, more ad impressions tend to be a good thing.

How do you see the new changes to Facebook’s News Feed improving ad performance?

Facebook Sees ROI with Social Ad Adoption

By Kye Mou May 8th, 2012

Marin Software released data this week highlighting the recent gains in social ad adoption by Facebook advertisers. New ad formats, such as Sponsored Stories, leverage word-of-mouth recommendations to bring social context to traditional ad creative. These highly relevant social ads are becoming a more effective way for Facebook advertisers to reach and engage their target audience. Some of the key data include:

• A 50% increase in click-through-rate (CTR) for social ads year-over-year
• An increase from 5% to 23% in Facebook ad budgets allocated towards social ads
• An 86% increase in cost-per-click (CPC) for social ads year-over-year

These year-over-year increases point towards a strong advertiser adoption rate. The relevant nature of social ads, coupled with strong CTRs, has caused a shift in advertising budgets from traditional ads to social ads. With the increasing adoption rate, competition amongst advertisers has resulted in increasing CPCs. Given current trends, Marin predicts that Facebook advertisers will allocate 50% of their budget towards social ad formats by the end of 2012. This would mark a significant jump from the current 23%.

For advance tips and best practices on implementing and managing Facebook ads, click here.

Poll: 6% of UK Advertisers Fully on Board with Facebook Ads

By Simon Whittick August 11th, 2011

Recently, Marin Software conducted a poll of advertisers in
the UK regarding their use of Facebook Ads. Nearly 400 advertisers of various
company sizes across a number of vertical sectors responded to the poll and of
the respondents 6% indicated they have “well developed” ad campaigns up and
running on Facebook. Forty-two percent of respondents said they are
“experimenting” with ad campaigns while the remaining 52% have yet to step foot
on the train, not having run any Facebook ads.

Although the UK is a leader in European
Facebook adoption, advertising on Facebook in the UK is clearly still in
the early stages. However, when taking into consideration analysts’
projection that Facebook ad revenue from outside the U.S. will be on par
with U.S. ad revenue by 2012, the figures from our poll tell us it’s only a
matter of time before the 42% “experimenting” with Facebook ads will have “well
developed” campaigns and the 52% percent still undecided will be
“experimenting.”