Facebook Sponsored Stories Ads Have 46% Higher CTR, 18% Lower Cost Per Fan Says TBG Digital Test
Facebook Ads API service provider TBG Digital has revealed that in a 10-day, 3-client, 2 billion impression test, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units received a 46% higher click through rate, a 20% lower cost per click, and an 18% lower cost per fan than Facebook’s standard ad units.
The new ad unit has looked especially promising because it so tightly fits in with how people use Facebook. It converts a user’s activity, such as Liking a Page or a using an application, into a sidebar ad shown to their friends. Those friends can then respond to the ad unit, through taking actions such as Liking the Page or playing a game.
With evidence like what TBG is providing, advertisers should strongly consider adding Sponsored Stories to their ad mix, and Ads API tools and services should move quickly to include the ad type in their offering.
TBG Digital carries out the purchase of up to 2 billion Facebook ad impressions a day via its Ads API service for big name clients including JetBlue, American Express, and Vodafone, making it one of the largest ad buyers on the platform. When Sponsored Stories launched in January, it moved quickly to be able to provide purchases of the ad unit at scale to its clients, and has integrated the three new Sponsored Stories types released last week into its offering. While Facebook reported that its own tests showed increased brand lift, engagement, and ad recall, there wasn’t conclusive evidence of how much better Sponsored Stories performed than standard ad units until now.
The three clients involved in the test were a retailer, a consumer packaged good brand, and a game developer, ensuring a breadth Sponsored Stories types and destinations were included. TBG Digital’s CEO Simon Mansell told us the company took care to keep the Sponsored Stories and standard ad groups as similar in targeting as possible preserve the integrity of the test. These facts combine with the high impression volume of the test to make the conclusions reliable.
Ads API-based media buyers such as TBG Digital test thousands of ad creative and targeting variants per campaign to attain the highest click through rate possible. The creative and targeting of Sponsored Stories are generated automatically, meaning Sponsored Stories not only represent a massive increase in click through rate, but a reduction in labor on the media buyer’s side.
Now that many brands have established their Facebook presence, they are concentrating on gaining fans. It now appears that the several Sponsored Stories ad types designed to drive traffic to Pages (Page Like stories, Page Post stories, Page Post Like stories) can reduce the acquisition cost per fan by 18%. This is a significant cost reduction considering many brands are looking to secure millions of additional fans.
Since Sponsored Stories don’t depend on media buyers discovering lucrative niche demographics with high click through rates that Facebook charges more for, Sponsored Stories campaigns have a 20% lower CPC according to the test. This could translate into big savings for brands, performance advertisers, and especially game developers who look to bring in millions of new players with ad campaigns supporting the launches of new games.
The data from this test support the assumptions some in the advertising industry have made about the shift towards social ad design. Sponsored Stories ad units take advantage of Facebook’s inherent strength — the social graph — to offer ad design unavailable in traditional search and display. Mansell tells us that currently about 10% of the impressions it buys are through Sponsored Stories, but that he expects that to increase to 25% as more of TBG Digital’s clients are signing on to use Sponsored Stories every day.
Since standard ad units are necessary to seed the initial actions that trigger Sponsored Stories, advertisers will always need to buy ads that don’t depend on user behavior. But data indicating that Sponsored Stories can deliver more clicks and more fans for cheaper, expect usage of Facebook’s social ad units to drastically increase this year, and more ad spend to shift from display to the social network.
May 4th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
[...] Comment Email Print This Post Tweet Facebook’s new ad unit, Sponsored Stories, seems to be pretty effective [Inside Facebook] [...]
May 5th, 2011 at 9:33 am
[...] Read more on the Sponsored Stories test here. [...]
May 6th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
[...] One Facebook advertising platform provider has found that Sponsored Story ad units have click-through rate that's 46% higher than standard Facebook ads, according to a post on Inside Facebook. [...]
May 7th, 2011 at 1:05 am
[...] Facebook have been testing some new ad concepts (see image). The premise is that when someone mentions a brand in their status update, that [...]
May 15th, 2011 at 4:50 pm
[...] 7. A Study Proves The Effectiveness Of Facebook’s Sponsored Story Ads [...]
June 7th, 2011 at 12:12 am
[...] or tools on top of the Facebook Ads API. Last month, it shared data indicating that Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad unit delivers a 46% higher click through rate, and an 18% lower cost per fan than traditional Facebook [...]
August 21st, 2011 at 9:24 am
[...] of this can be seen in the click through rate for sponsored stories on Facebook, compared to standard ads [...]
August 23rd, 2011 at 12:37 pm
[...] Stories achieve a higher click through rate, and cost less than normal ads. This could be due to their placing above the normal ad format, [...]
August 30th, 2011 at 12:55 am
[...] nicht umsonst im Mittelpunkt dieses Charts: Im Januar von Facebook eingeführt, sollen sie laut Inside Facebook mit einer um 46% höheren CTR wesentlich effizienter als Standard Ads sein. Auch wenn Facebook mit [...]
September 19th, 2011 at 4:15 am
[...] content, especially if you can identify a close friend as someone who is ‘liking’ them. Studies have shown that sponsored stories have higher CTR and lower costings associated with them. Again, makes sense. [...]
October 29th, 2011 at 8:45 pm
[...] recently signed. In the past, the popular Ads API tool provider has released reports showing the high efficiency of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories ad units and ads that target existing [...]
November 22nd, 2011 at 3:14 am
[...] их виртуальных друзей на странице рекламодателя. Как сообщал неофициальный сайт Inside Facebook, такой тип рекламы в [...]
November 22nd, 2011 at 12:43 pm
[...] 45% higher CTR rates [...]
November 23rd, 2011 at 2:05 am
[...] их виртуальных друзей на странице рекламодателя. Как сообщал неофициальный сайт Inside Facebook, такой тип рекламы в [...]
December 13th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
[...] by the way, a study showed that sponsored stories have a 46% higher click-through-rate. In online advertising, higher [...]
December 13th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
[...] sounds like Sponsored Stories, considering a study conducted in May showed the social ads have a 46% higher click through rate and 20% lower CPC. This shows they’re attractive to both viewers and [...]
December 23rd, 2011 at 6:34 am
[...] request placement in the news feed. Studies have shown sidebar Sponsored Stories have a 46% higher click through rate than traditional ads, and you can expect the CTR of news feed Sponsored Stories to be even [...]
December 28th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
[...] rapporter gros à Facebook, dont 90 % des revenus proviennent des annonceurs. En effet, selon une étude réalisée en mai dernier, les publicités sous forme « d’actualités commanditées » avaient [...]
January 11th, 2012 at 10:22 am
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February 16th, 2012 at 8:03 am
[...] Sponsored stories are getting a 46% higher CTR, which is a win-win situation both for investors and Facebook [...]
February 20th, 2012 at 1:30 am
[...] trekt. De CTR resultaten van Sponsored Stories versus reguliere Facebook Ads zijn positief. Een stijging in CTR van 46% is al een behoorlijke verbetering en de verwachting is dat de CTR verder stijgt met de introductie [...]
February 20th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
[...] the best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower [...]
February 20th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
[...] [...]
February 20th, 2012 at 11:16 pm
[...] of a best ways to deposit in Facebook promotion is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% aloft click-through rate, a 20% reduce [...]
February 20th, 2012 at 11:32 pm
[...] is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46 percent higher click-through rate, according to a study by TBG Digital, a 20 percent lower cost per click and an 18 percent lower [...]
February 21st, 2012 at 12:04 am
[...] the best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower [...]
February 21st, 2012 at 8:44 am
[...] best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower [...]
February 24th, 2012 at 9:01 am
[...] best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower [...]
February 27th, 2012 at 8:37 am
[...] But social ads are on the rise. Right now they’re primarily on Facebook and Twitter, but the high click through rates of Sponsored Stories and Promoted Tweets could inspire Tumblr, Instagram, and maybe even Pinterest to build out [...]
February 29th, 2012 at 10:53 pm
[...] Jedną z najbardziej efektywnych form reklamowych na Facebooku są zdarzenia sponsorowane. Zgodnie z badaniami przeprowadzonymi przez TBG Digital [...]
March 7th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
[...] secondo un altro studio di TBG Digital di un annetto fa, gli annunci pubblicitari all’interno delle Sponsored Stories di Facebook [...]
March 20th, 2012 at 9:08 am
[...] it too. According to the website Techcrunch, “studies have shown sidebar Sponsored Stories have a 46% higher click through rate than traditional ads.” This is just the kind of thing that can get a marketing executive really excited! Suddenly, you [...]
May 9th, 2012 at 8:11 am
[...] to a user will also be more effective – and the numbers prove it. Sponsored Stories have a 46% higher click-through-rate than Facebook’s standards ads and a Nielsen study showed a 68% increase in ad recall (how likely [...]
June 11th, 2012 at 4:01 am
[...] Stories, which carry social relevance and organic generation. That’s already bearing out in performance metrics compared with traditional banner ads (especially on mobile).The other example of premium inventory [...]
June 16th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
[...] successful compared to other Facebook ad types — they can have between 20 percent and 46 percent higher click-through rates than other [...]
June 16th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
[...] extremely successful compared to other Facebook ad types — they can have between 20 percent and 46 percent higher click-through rates than other ad [...]
June 18th, 2012 at 5:07 am
[...] The lawsuit saw Mark Zuckerberg saying that a trusted referral was the ‘Holy Grail’ of advertising. chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is of the belief that the “value of a ‘sponsored story’ advertisement was at least twice and up to three times the value of a standard Facebook.com ad without a friend endorsement.” Sponsored ads are more successful than other Facebook ad units and notch 46% higher CTR, as reported here. [...]
August 17th, 2012 at 7:21 pm
[...] the best ways to invest in Facebook advertising is by leveraging Sponsored Stories. According to a study by TBG Digital, Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories ad units nabbed a 46% higher click-through rate, a 20% lower [...]
September 12th, 2012 at 11:24 am
[...] Pros: Facebook’s products allow you to interact with a huge social ecosystem – one that spends a ton of time interacting in the site. Brands align with trusted sources (your friends) to promote their products by leveraging real brand interactions (“Likes” and “Shares”). If consumers trust their friends for recommendations, then this an incredibly effective way to build brand lift. The stories product has proven to be the most effective even in comparison to standard Facebook ads. [...]
October 8th, 2012 at 2:48 pm
[...] Facebook sponsored stories can be highly successful, with much higher click-through rates than other Facebook ads. [...]
October 23rd, 2012 at 4:43 pm
[...] by the way, a study showed that sponsored stories have a 46% higher click-through-rate. In online advertising, higher [...]