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Facebook is the website du jour, but in Reach Students’ experience it delivers appalling ad clickthroughs.

We’ve run four targeted campaigns this year using its flyer ads, and each time the results have been disappointing.

Our most recent campaign saw 1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate. Ouch.

When we first experienced poor results earlier this year we looked carefully at creative and planning. Further experimentation saw a variety of quite different offers and creative approaches. What kept us going was the fact that others had anecdotally mentioned good returns from Facebook ads.

Yet our results did not improve.

Baffled, we did some research and discovered that actually we are not alone.

Valleywag finds that 0.04% is pretty much the average when it comes Facebook clickthroughs - note that they are talking about banners as well as flyers.

There is varied speculation as to why the clickthroughs are so shockingly poor on Facebook. Some have cited the fact the site is essentially messaging orientated – rather than content orientated - meaning that therefore users are in no frame of mind to slope off down trails.

I don’t buy this. As a long time Facebook user myself I find myself inadvertently following trails like a distracted sniffer dog. Similarly I nearly always click on flyers when I see them. I click them because their restrictive nature (there’s little space to work with) means the advertiser often has to be clever, and I am usually intrigued by the offer.

Many of the flyer ads I’ve seen have been very clickable – much more so than typical banner ads. That said, I actually don’t see that many flyers on my Facebook travels. Nothing like the amount that are displaying on my network, according to the flyers board.

It remains a mystery to me why such perfectly targeted ads with highly relevant messages perform so badly on Facebook compared to other sites - often sites where the targeting is less precise.

Until solved, I think we’ll stick to PR initiatives through the site – such as our work for Avenue Q that generated over ¼ million mini-feed messages through user profiles. And on a budget significantly smaller than it costs to buy the same number of Facebook clickthroughs.

In fact, at least $199,000 smaller!

Recruitment website grb.uk.com has been recognised by highly esteemed The Webby Awards.

The leading international honor for the web – dubbed the ‘Oscars of the Internet’ - named GRB’s site as an Official Honoree, a distinction that recognises work exhibiting remarkable achievement.

“The Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “Official Honoree selection is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.”

GRB co-founder Dan Hawes said: “We are of course extremely pleased to receive this award – the third this year! The design of our site is just stage one of our online strategy. Now we are looking at functionality and features using the latest technology.”

The 11th Annual Webby Awards received a record 8,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states. Out more than 8,000 entries submitted, fewer than 15% received this honor and were deemed an Official Honoree.

For further information please contact 01273 200411.

Univillage, the social networking site for UK students, has partnered with SUBtv.

The move coincides with an end of its relationship with youth marketing agency Face Group.

Peter Miles of SUBtv told Reach Students that the two media will work together to facilitate user-generated content through Univillage. There will be a particular focus on encouraging and empowering small communities on campus, such as sports teams.

When Univillage launched over a year ago it was clearly seen as a UK competitor to Facebook, which at the time was only for students. Miles said Univillage would not want to compete directly with Facebook any longer and was instead developing a unique identity inspired by the work already done by SUBtv on campuses.

It’s an interesting time for student-centred social networks.

Six months ago few would have thought any competitor stood a chance of survival against Facebook.

However, the landscape has altered now that Mark Zuckerberg’s phenomenal product has opened its doors to all and sundry. Students no longer have an exclusive environment on Facebook to share opinion, ideas, jokes and advice.

The nuances of communication between intelligent young adults are suddenly subject to scrutiny and misinterpretation from ‘outsiders’.

The seismic introduction of the apps functionality has also changed the site fundamentally.

It will be intriguing to see how things develop and whether the core users in the UK – which currently remain students – ever start to feel that their playground has been taken away from them.

I said I’d report back on Haymarket’s student marketing conference. That was back in April and I have since allowed the blog to get covered in cobwebs. My bad.

With feather duster in hand, here goes on what I remember of it…

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