Are Facebook Ads Effective?

by | Dec 27, 2011

As a tech-savvy Internet user, chances are you rarely notice the ads that run on Facebook. In fact, you might not see them at all as a result of using Adblock Plus. Because these ads have little to no impact on you, it’s natural to assume that the same is true for everyone else. However, before you completely dismiss Facebook ads, it’s important to remember that being tech-savvy puts you in the minority of Internet users, not the majority. As a result, the question is what does everyone else think of these ads?

They Are Effective

Neuroscience Marketing recently published the results of a Facebook ads study. The study itself was conducted by another firm, Neurofocus. It’s important to note that this firm was hired by Facebook “to study how users perceived ads on premium websites.” The reason that the distinction between “premium” and “average” websites is mentioned is because NeuroFocus had done additional work to confirm that “premium” websites captured more of viewers’ attention and were more engaging emotionally than “average” websites.
This study compared a user’s own News Feed page on Facebook, as well as the default home pages of Yahoo! and NYTimes.com. According to the results of the Neurofocus study, “people viewing their own “News Feed” page on Facebook exhibited high levels of activation on all three metrics: attention, emotional engagement, and memory. The Facebook page had statistically higher levels of emotional engagement than either of the other two pages tested.”

They Aren’t Effective

While the Neurofocus study is interesting, the two main issues are it was paid for by Facebook and only compared Facebook to two other sites. Because many marketers are more interested in data driven results, they want to see information such as how the results of spending on Facebook ads compares to spending on Google AdWords.

Fortunately, several people have published the results of their own tests. Back in September of last year, Ajith Edassery of DollarShower ran a small Facebook ads test. The results of his test were after spending $27.51, he ended up with 1.27million impressions, 303 clicks but zero sales.

In June of this year, Forrest Smith ran five Facebook ad campaigns to market his new iPhone app. At the end of his experiment, he had spent $59.54 for 62 clicks. The campaign resulted in him selling 23 copies of his app and generating $48.30 in revenue. The one caveat is he wasn’t 100% sure of how many of the sales were the direct result of the ads (although he had only made 1 sale in the three days prior to first using Facebook ads).
Because there is support for and against the effectiveness of these ads, it’s worth asking:

Have you tried using Facebook ads? What were your results?