Facebook advertising brings poor results
July 11th, 2007 by LukeFacebook 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!
Posted in Social networks, Online marketing | 
July 12th, 2007 at 10:25 am
On a much smaller scale, we’ve also been trying out flyers with similarly poor results. On the other hand, the Facebook group for the student services organisation I work for has turned out to be a great laboratory for our staff to learn some tough lessons about social media which we’ll be applying in the future.
July 12th, 2007 at 10:43 am
[…] The juxtaposition this morning of John Batelle’s post on Facebook’s stratospheric valuation, and Reach Students blog’s report of a “shockingly poor” .04% clickthrough rate on Facebook campaigns, is at the very least jarring. Related Posts […]
July 12th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Well personally, I just use an adblocker.
No ads, no problem, in my view.
July 12th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Mystery? Students are intelligent. They are not taken in by advertising and so don’t click. Why would they want to? Also lots of them run with ad blocking software so won’t see the ads. I wasn’t even aware that Facebook had ads…..
July 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
[…] With Facebook’s heritage as a social network for students, it must the perfect platform for advertisers hoping to penetrate the college campus, right? Wrong. According to a UK consultancy firm which specializes in student and graduate recruitment marketing, click through rates have been on the extremely low side — 0.04% based on 1.4 million impressions — leading the company to abandon Facebook ads for the foreseeable future. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of poor ad campaign results from marketers using Facebook. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Xman writes: “Mystery? Students are intelligent”
The mystery surrounds the poor ad clickthrough rate on Facebook when compared with other sites where a similar (mostly intelligent) demographic is found.
I agree students are intelligent. I agree so much that I describe my business as ‘Digital marketing to intelligent youth’!
Are you saying only dumb people click ads?
You may be thinking here of ‘ads’ in terms of those intrusive buzzing flies you have to swat or bouncing smiley banners…but the flyers I ran were generally promoting proven content, were neatly integrated with the Facebook mood and were pitched to specific uni networks.
Those that say ‘what ads - i didn’t know facebook even did ads!’ kind of illustrate the point here too. How come people aren’t seeing them?
Students are tech-savvy, but I don’t think the Ad Block factor explains everything. I’d certainly be interested to see figures on Ad Block take up among UK students.
Also I wonder if Ad Block identifies flyers anyway? They are not served remotely - unlike their banners - and I imagine they get through as an integral piece of the page??
July 12th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
[…] So Facebook is worth $8 Billion. I agree it is worth a lot and it can be something that is very powerful in the future. I actually believe it will. But the $8 Billion are surely not based on current revenue. They had 15.8 Billion Page Impressions in the last month. Let’s presume they have all available inventory sold. Judging by this post they would make $2.6 Million a month, so $30 Million a year, meaning $8 Billion is a price to sales multiple of 266! And if you take this post, then you will start to wonder if they are fully booked because the ads do not really work well. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
[…] This Post is Wrong: Facebook is and will be a monetization machine This post today says that advertising isn’t working on Facebook. Well the post missed the point. So did John Battelle. Ad products and standards haven’t yet evolved for the real value of Facebook - the communities. You can run a poll, give a gift, look at a banner…bla bla bla… The users of Facebook are savvy. So are the top advertisers. Look for a major ad buy on Facebook by a big player - no doubt it will happen soon. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
I am thinking about running a small local Facebook ad campaign for my retail clothing store in Nashville, TN. Do you have any pointers for maximizing Facebook ad campaigns? Or is it just a total waste?
July 12th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
I’m with K R above. My browser has an ad blocker which blocks anything that might distract me from what I’m trying to look at.
I hadn’t even noticed that FaceBook had ads till just recently …
July 12th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Yeah, basically this same point was made on the Pro*Net Advertising blog by Muhammed Saleem, but i think they’re both missing the point.
Advertising sucks on Facebook because *CPM-BASED ADVERTISING* sucks, not because Facebook sucks.
The real opportunity is in developing Facebook apps that engage users, and draw them into more meaningful conversations with specific workflow relevant to the type of products & services they want — if you do that, then the mktg/adv opportunities will become readily apparent, and will take off like a rocket.
for more thoughts on How to Market Facebook Apps & Be a Better Lover, see my post here:
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/marketing-faceb.html
enjoy.
- dave mcclure
July 12th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Hey Dave - I certainly don’t think Facebook sucks, and I am with you on connecting through apps (a very good way to go I think). The post was more simply about the fact ‘traditional’ ads on Facebook don’t work that well at all.
Jackson - I would take Dave’s advice and build an app! If you can’t afford that I’d look at doing something through groups. You might want to give the flyers a go - they are SO cheap, it doesn’t cost much to see for yourself. Make sure you set up analytics so you can track results.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
[…] The minor battle of the morning today is about a post by Luke on the Reach Students blog. According to his experience, flyer ads campaigns on Facebook get an abysmally bad 0.04% clickthrough rate: We’ve run four targeted campaigns this year using its flyer ads, and each time the results have been disappointing. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
[…] There has been a bunch of buzz today about how Facebook advertising produces poor results. Valleywag has also confirmed that the average click through rate of Facebook ads is 0.04%. This is horrendous. A few years back I tested out a $15 flier to see how effective the ad would be and I experienced the same thing. Why is there such a horrible click through rate on Facebook? According to Luke of the Reach Students blog: 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. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
[…] Valleywag first reported on Facebook’s abysmal click through rates (CTR), then today we read one more account of how Facebook yields very low CTRs: Our most recent campaign saw 1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
[…] The Reach Students blog just released an interesting article on the lackluster performance of Facebook based advertising: “Facebook is the website du jour, but in Reach Students’ experience it delivers appalling ad clickthroughs. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I have to agree with #6, students click less and less on ads, especially the more tech savvy and educated they are.
July 12th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
[…] Yup, Facebook advertising isn’t terribly effective There’s some buzz today about the ineffectiveness of Facebook flyer ads. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
[…] However, Facebook’s deals with a completely different audience (and maturity level) than Valleywag or Gawker Media (with the exception of LifeHacker). So, for Owen Thomas to pontificate about Facebook’s sure demise because of low CTR’s is just silly and ignorant. The Reach Students blog notes that a campaign on Facebook drew a 0.04% click-through rate — a dismal response that’s far from uncommon in advertisers’ experiences. No wonder the site is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find advertisers. If Zuckerberg is to maintain his site’s precious independence, he will have to figure out better ways for his company — and its advertisers — to profit from its rapidly swelling user base. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
“Are you saying only dumb people click ads?”
Yes.
More than that… Only dumb people *place* ads, as there’s no empirical evidence that ads lead to sales.
More than anything, what you’re observing here is the beginning of the end of all advertising-based media — for purely profit-based, capitalistic reasons.
Advertising delivers zero value to shareholders specifically, and companies generally.
You can look forward to massive shareholder lawsuits against management teams dumb enough to continue to use ads in the face of the lack of empirical support.
July 12th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
[…] Reach Students blog » Blog Archive » Facebook advertising brings poor results 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. (tags: banner advertising facebook CTR) […]
July 12th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
[…] Banner ads on Facebook is a dumb way to monetize. Same on MySpace. People don’t pay attention to banner ads on social networks because they are too busy paying attention to EACH OTHER. It’s no surprise that people are complaining about low click through rates on Facebook display ads. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
[…] [via] Link to This Post: […]
July 12th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
“Only dumb people *place* ads, as there’s no empirical evidence that ads lead to sales… Advertising delivers zero value to shareholders specifically, and companies generally.”
Wow. This statement is so incredibly wrong, it’s difficult to believe anyone would say it. Almost any time that we buy or use any branded thing, we’re probably using that particular brand because they paid someone something to make us aware of it.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
[…] Facebook advertising brings poor results — 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. Source: Reach Students blog Author: Luke Link: http://www.reachstudents.co.uk/blog/2007/07/11… Techmeme permalink […]
July 12th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Any chance we can see the ads in question? I’d love to evaluate design…..
For a cheap RON campaign .04% might not be that bad, but for something more targeted I understand expected CTR is likely to be well north of that.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
““Only dumb people *place* ads, as there’s no empirical evidence that ads lead to sales… Advertising delivers zero value to shareholders specifically, and companies generally.”
Actually many companies know exactly how many sales lead directly from that ad. Many track the the impression, to a click, to a sale, or to a form filled out which is followed up over the phone, and then converted to a sale. It’s often called direct marketing, and it makes up a large portion of internet spend.
July 12th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
[…] How does Luke back up his blog claim today that “clickthroughs are so shockingly poor on Facebook?” He doesn’t, to the sufficient satisfaction of any serious analyst. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
[…] The people at Reach Students had some bad luck with Facebook’s offerings, they are the ones that cited the atrocious .04% click thru. Our most recent campaign saw 1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate. Ouch. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
[…] Valleywag: Today, I don’t think Randi Jayne, director of market development at Facebook and sister of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, would sing quite so gleefully about “startups [that] get the rag … from Valleywag.” Because now comes her employer’s turn. The Reach Students blog notes that a campaign on Facebook drew a 0.04% click-through rate — a dismal response that’s far from uncommon in advertisers’ experiences. No wonder the site is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find advertisers. If Zuckerberg is to maintain his site’s precious independence, he will have to figure out better ways for his company — and its advertisers — to profit from its rapidly swelling user base. Should he consider placing ads on his sister’s show tunes instead? They’d get better click-throughs. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
[…] [via] […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
[…] Totuşi, nu pot trece de senzaţia de balon de săpun. Prea e toată lumea încântată fără un motiv serios (altul decât “nu e ca myspace”). Banii din publicitate nu vin prea mulţi, dar asta e o problema a întregii industrii, care nu ştie cum să monetizeze chestia asta numită “web2.0″ (şi anunţă că ”timp petrecut pe pagină” va înlocui “afisarea“)(apropos, zoso.ro a făcut ieri 17.000 de afişări). […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
[…] El primero es este post en Reach Students, donde comentan que en una serie de campañas de “flyer ads” de 1.4 millones de impresiones solo consiguieron alcanzar un clickthroughrate (CTR) de 0,04%. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
[…] [via] […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
[…] If you’ve ever spent more than 5 minutes on the sites, it’s easy to figure out why that is. There’s (ugly) advertising plastered all over MySpace and next to no ads on Facebook. Most of the ads you’ll find on Facebook are the simple flyer ads on the left hand side. They’ve recently made the news for having abysmal click-thru rates. I’m not surprised, but considering that they seem to be basically a throw away, I don’t care. Facebook is clearly determined to figure out the product, then worry about the advertisements. I think they can easily do both, but I get what they’re doing. I believe that Facebook will continue to grow faster than MySpace, and when they decide to focus on advertising, will have no trouble increasing their revenue. Today it’s clearly an afterthought. […]
July 12th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
[…] If you’ve ever spent more than 5 minutes on the sites, it’s easy to figure out why that is. There’s (ugly) advertising plastered all over MySpace and next to no ads on Facebook. Most of the ads you’ll find on Facebook are the simple flyer ads on the left hand side. They’ve recently made the news for having abysmal click-thru rates. I’m not surprised, but considering that they seem to be basically a throw away, I don’t care. Facebook is clearly determined to figure out the product, then worry about the advertisements. I think they can easily do both, but I get what they’re doing. I believe that Facebook will continue to grow faster than MySpace, and when they decide to focus on advertising, will have no trouble increasing their revenue. Today it’s clearly an afterthought. […]
July 13th, 2007 at 1:18 am
[…] Back when MySpace was all the rage, there was a lot of talk about the seemingly wide disparity between its traffic and its profitability. As it turned out, the company really couldn’t figure out a good way to monetize its traffic, as its advertising rates were pitifully low. Eventually, the company signed a deal with Google, ensuring that News Corp. would comfortably recoup its purchase price and then some. Now that Facebook has assumed the mantle of social networking site du jour, all of the same questions are again being raised. One advertiser notes that the click-through rates on Facebook ads are terrible, which in turn forces it to sell advertising at cut-rate prices. As Valleywag notes, the cheap ad prices bring in some unsavory advertisers who put pop-ups on your computer along with false warnings that you’ve been infected by a virus. Of course, this only makes users less inclined to click on ads in the future, exacerbating the cycle. None of this is to denigrate what Facebook has accomplished so far, which is obviously quite impressive. But at the end of the day, the company will have to find a better way to profit, especially if it wants to go public. […]
July 13th, 2007 at 7:51 am
[…] Back when MySpace was all the rage, there was a lot of talk about the seemingly wide disparity between its traffic and its profitability. As it turned out, the company really couldn’t figure out a good way to monetize its traffic, as its advertising rates were pitifully low. Eventually, the company signed a deal with Google, ensuring that News Corp. would comfortably recoup its purchase price and then some. Now that Facebook has assumed the mantle of social networking site du jour, all of the same questions are again being raised. One advertiser notes that the click-through rates on Facebook ads are terrible, which in turn forces it to sell advertising at cut-rate prices. As Valleywag notes, the cheap ad prices bring in some unsavory advertisers who put pop-ups on your computer along with false warnings that you’ve been infected by a virus. Of course, this only makes users less inclined to click on ads in the future, exacerbating the cycle. None of this is to denigrate what Facebook has accomplished so far, which is obviously quite impressive. But at the end of the day, the company will have to find a better way to profit, especially if it wants to go public. […]
July 13th, 2007 at 7:56 am
[…] [via] […]
July 14th, 2007 at 12:21 am
“Wow. This statement is so incredibly wrong, it’s difficult to believe anyone would say it. Almost any time that we buy or use any branded thing, we’re probably using that particular brand because they paid someone something to make us aware of it.”
A fine emotional response, but I note there’s no data to back that up.
Look… What you’re arguing is, The more one spends on advertising, the higher one’s sales should be. That means, among other things, the ranking of top advertisers should closely match the top rankings of the Fortune 500 (which is by sales).
Here’s Neilsen’s most recent update:
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=764d40cf14023110VgnVCM100000ac0a260aRCRD
Here’s the Fortune 500:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/full_list/index.html
The lists do not match — at all. They don’t even match inversely — ie, the less one spends, the more sales one gets.
No, the relationship between the two is fairly random. Which strongly suggests there no relationship at all.
(And don’t forget survivorship bias. Any number of companies have spent tons on advertising, only to fail anyway.)
If you have better data, show it.
July 14th, 2007 at 1:26 am
[…] Reach Students blog » Blog Archive » Facebook advertising brings poor results 0.04% clickthrough rate on facebook? (tags: web2.0 marketing blog advertising) […]
July 14th, 2007 at 1:31 am
[…] The most commonly used fact is the “0.04%” CTR from Reach Students Blog and the Wag. Click through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that generate a click on an ad. In this case 0.04% means that 4 out of 10,000 views result in an ad getting clicked. The problem isn’t that Facebook’s cadre of “poor-ass” college students aren’t interested in clicking links, it’s that the ads are frequently repeated and irrelevant to the user. I find the “poor student” argument to be bogus, since many of the ads don’t require the user to spend any money at all (i.e Ask or Career Builder). […]
July 14th, 2007 at 4:57 am
[…] As I have mentioned previously, I have spoken with marketers at major brands who expressed disappointment with the results of advertising campaigns on social networks. Reach Students, a UK-based digital marketing consultancy, joins the list of unsatisfied marketers. The company published a blog post entitled “Facebook advertising brings poor results” detailing the poor results of the company’s marketing campaigns on Facebook. Reach Students reports: We’ve run four targeted campaigns this year using its flyer ads, and each time the results have been disappointing. […]
July 14th, 2007 at 7:18 am
[…] here […]
July 14th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Why Facebook, Why Now?
John Betelle set off the quintessential question, for the month, which is a question - at least the way he frames it - that usually refers to some point in our fragile lives that has come to an uncertain and perhaps perilous juncture. Or to an equally …
July 14th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
[…] Scoble, on the other hand, jumped on the advertising issue that TechMeme [1] pointed out. He shoots-down the entire advertising scheme of the site by what seems to be play-by-play example of its short comings. He then summarizes that, “Facebook needs an advertising platform and it needs one in the worst way. I’m not going to even look at the ads until the ads are tied to the people on Facebook. Facebook knows what we’re into, put ads for those things onto our profiles and messages.” […]
July 15th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
It would be great if Facebook let you target flyers based on interests, i.e. ‘target all students who have an interest in computer science’ or something along those lines.
July 16th, 2007 at 2:51 am
[…] Many people have said that Facebook advertising brings poor results. Facebook is the website du jour, but in Reach Students’ experience it delivers appalling ad clickthroughs. […]
July 18th, 2007 at 12:28 am
[…] A few months ago, Valleywag posted a brief discussion of the supposedly dismal clickthrough rate of Facebook flyers: .04%. Clicktrough rate is a measure of the percentage of viewers/visitors that click on a particular ad or link and a .04% rate is indeed miserably low by most measures. For some reason, this discussion was noticed and discussed by a few more folks last month, including Fred Stutzman. […]
July 18th, 2007 at 2:07 am
[…] Facebook Advertising Results PoorThe author makes some suggestions as to what may be causing the decline. The way I see it, I never click on banner ads. Facebook is still largely filled with people who are similar to me in age group, technological interest, etc. Ad clickthroughs are probably low because the users (aka people like me) just naturally tune out the ads or use ad-blocking software. […]
July 20th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
[…] Facebook might have another problem: how to make money. In March, Valleywag reported that Facebook ads performed dismally for a number of media buyers, averaging a terrible 0.04% click-through rate. “Facebook was consistently the worst performing site on just about every campaign we ever ran with them,” complained an anonymous advertiser to the gossip blog. Last week Reach Students confirmed the low 0.04% click-through rate (at least for flyer ads). […]
July 20th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
[…] In another post by Reach Students Blog: We’ve run four targeted campaigns this year using its flyer ads, and each time the results have been disappointing. […]
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
[…] Gimme some mula, Facebook! I’m skeptical of the revenue opportunities for third-party applications on Facebook right now. True, Zuckelberg has promised third-party applications that they can keep 100% of the profits they make. But, where are the profits going to come from? It’s not clear if there is significant purchasing intent for users while they are on Facebook. It’s a social application right now- people are on it see what their buddies are doing, not buy stuff (even though there are ‘marketplaces’ popping up in Facebook). Facebook banner ads and flyers have an average 0.04% clickthrough rate, which is quite terrible by any standard. Andrew Chen, a Silicon-Valley VC, offers a solution: If widget makers are allowed to send traffic a ton of traffic to their own destination sites, that might work well - in that case, it’d make sense to charge the widget makers a cost-per-click for every user leaving the site, similar to the way that Google funnels people OFF the google.com search engine for a fee. That would make Facebook a true traffic acquisition engine. […]
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
[…] Finally, ReachStudents reports that Facebook has a bad record on advert rates. Which doesn’t suprise me and probably explains why half the adverts appear to be those horrid flashing “Win a new laptop… click here” and other dodgy adverts. Facebook again demonstrates that sticking a poster up will not attract people to your product, you have to be far more clever than that. And, ultimately the winners there tend to be the good products, rather than the overnight-scams. That can only be a good thing for our society. […]
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:02 am
[…] More on Facebook… and its advertising failures Facebook advertising brings poor results […]
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:09 am
[…] I still puzzle about the extent to which they’re delivering on the promise of 30,000,000 users to advertisers, though. We’ve experimented with Facebook fliers in promoting careers events for students and have generally had a much lower return on our investment than from common or garden buttons and banners on other sites more targeted to the sector (e.g. Doctor Job, Graduate Prospects et al). We aren’t the only ones - there was a flurry of commentary on the like of Reach Students, Master of 500 Hats et al a few weeks ago on the same theme. […]
August 4th, 2007 at 3:22 am
[…] Reach Students blog » Blog Archive » Facebook advertising brings poor results Advertisers are saying Facebook delivers appalling ad clickthrough rates. I have noticed when I am on Facebook the ads seem disconnected from what I’m doing/thinking. That’s not good, but it can be fixed over time. (tags: social facebook) […]
August 4th, 2007 at 5:26 am
[…] Am I alone in believing that if advertising on Facebook was hugely effective, then all these companies would have simply rode the storm: “We can’t control what groups users set up, and I think most people understand that”. Perhaps, more likely is that as ReachStudents reported in the beginning of July, advertising on Facebook is not desperately effective, and these companies, who jumped on the social-networking bandwagon, are now discovering that essentially they are pouring money down the drain. So they’ve played the racism card as an exit strategy that makes it difficult for Facebook to, publicly at least, complain about breach of contract. […]
August 15th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
We have been running very targeted flyer campaigns on facebook with average results.
The click through rate is fairly poor, but conversations are good for those that do click. We are a review based website so that is the bit that matters!
August 19th, 2007 at 6:10 am
[…] “A Campaign to Block Firefox Users?” Filed under: Ad Blocking, Online Advertising — S @ 6:10 am Yes, this is what was discussed on slashdot. Then, I just happened to see this facebook advertising warning which mentioned about smart students using ad blockers. […]
August 24th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
[…] I can point to several reports that seem to show traditional advertising models don’t seem to be working on Facebook - at least not in its current form. Facebook is working on a more focused system for advertisers, and those results remain to be seen. Perhaps more focused efforts will have better results. […]
November 8th, 2007 at 12:52 am
[…] (2007). Facebook advertising brings poor results, Rech Students Blog [cited 8 Nov 2007] […]
November 29th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
It’s crap !
Sorry my comments are not more constructive! But I had no luck with my campaigns. I feel, as I have no proof, but face book visitors are their just for fun, if they want to go shopping they use a search engine.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
[…] The whole issue is caught up with the wider debate about Facebook privacy. Accusations that Facebook are doctoring search to suit their own nefarious ends have also hit the networking site. People are increasingly worried that Facebook has amassed a dangerously detailed and complete data reservoir to the extent that the Information Commissioner will step in to provide guidelines for young people. There has been a backlash against the ad program from not only users but also advertisers who argue that paid for ads simply do not garner enough interest (a pathetic click through rate of 0.04%)- unlike on Google people are not looking (in the main) for anything specific on Facebook other than to generally follow what their friends are up to, say hi etc. Newly released corporate pages, part of the recent overhaul in their ad program, have not gone down well either, and even Penguin, who have created one, admit that there are some issues with the whole concept of Facebook and corporate identity. It appears then that Facebook is increasingly imbricated with third parties, mostly unknown to casual users, who can then use the site in both obvious and ever more subtle ways, a shift that has lead Bokardo to call the design “Brilliant but Evil” and demand an opt in for any corporate programs or knowledge sharing. For example you can now get involved with SpriteSips, as in the soft drink, which offers a host of content and activities from videos to music and “mobile refreshment”. For a while Facebook has been talked up as a business network, largely over the heads of its core (or original) users who just carried on posting drunken pictures, stupid comments and pointless messages. Now the boundaries between the social content and the box ads has broken down, a breakdown that was inevitable at some level once the site was opened to developers. […]
December 23rd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
[…] Some of my doubts about Facebook’s ability to monetize their platform were fueled by recent reports of abysmal performance for bulletin advertising (0.04% click through rate). Facebook users are relatively sophisticated, and they just don’t click on conventional advertisements, or even the Facebook specific bulletins. So how will Facebook generate revenue to justify the lofty valuations being tossed around by the media? […]
January 12th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
[…] - Aπό την άλλη και παρά την μαζική έλευση χρηστών, το Reach Students Blog αναφέρεται στην χαμηλή απόδοση της διαφήμισης μέσω του Facebook, στο άρθρο Facebook advertising brings poor results […]
January 15th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Facebook with its large subscription must find a way to use advertising without giving their user’s information to its advertisers, or compensate users with a small reward. I know that businesses will pay and pay well for a large market.
Garner NC City Guide
February 5th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[…] How brand advocates can bring marketing results on FacebookFacebook advertising brings poor resultsIndustry site gets WebbyUnivillage swaps partners‘Capture student spend’ - conference review […]
February 25th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[…] Reach Students: Facebook advertising warning […]
March 6th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Okay my ten cents. We tested a flyer on Facebook and it rocked. CTR aproaching 3.6%!!! It was so successful it was pulled for three months, tried again and it did a CTR of 4.9%. Thousands of orders from two short campaigns.
Now if you can’t even get 0.1% for your campaign, look hard at your campaign - not Facebook. Sounds like you aren’t as clever as you like others to believe
Luke, Reach Students replies:
If I was clever I would have achieved results as incredible as yours. You should write up a case study - there’s a lot of people who would want to read it, since my figures are considered typical Facebook CTR by consensus of opinion, whereas yours are absolutely remarkable.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
[…] Despite the fact that social media advertising has yet to hit its stride and is taking some lumps for reportedly low click rates it will ultimately succeed. Social media is a different type of platform to advertise on than information oriented websites and should not be compared. The reality is that social media delivers the holy grail for advertisers on the Internet, a mass concentrated U.S. audience reach similar to television. […]
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 am
[…] We all know about the different banner ads, fan pages, flyers, and newsfeed ads that are supposedly aimed towards users but interestingly enough, it doesn’t seem to work that well at all. Here’s a statistic from a site called Reach Students. They ran a few tests and their most recent one at the writing of the article (July 2007) showed that “1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate”. That’s an impressively bad rate. The site even cites another site saying that’s the average for clickthrough rates on Facebook. Really? Why can that be? […]
April 7th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
[…] And lastly, from a digital student marketing blog in the UK. This would seem like a natural fit for Facebook’s audience: Our most recent campaign saw 1.4 million page impressions delivered at specific universities – and only a 0.04% clickthrough rate. Ouch. […]
April 9th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
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May 5th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
[…] Monetizing social networks can be difficult. Users come there in order to interact with their friends, not in order to click on ads. A friend of mine has just started placing ads on Facebook and Google Adsense and is reporting a CTR of 0.1% for Facebook and 0.8% for Google Adsense. As a matter of fact, one of his ads ended up running through 15,000 impressions without a single click on Facebook. And he’s not alone with his experience. […]