Click-through rates are crucial to advertisers, especially through ads and email newsletters. When measuring the effectiveness of a campaign, we often turn first to a few different metrics, one of the biggest being click-through rate. When analyzing this metric, we are really trying to understand how many people were interested enough in the ad to click on a prompting link that takes them to our intended destination. The destination may be our website homepage, specific product page or a promotional landing page.
Click-through rates are important regardless of the type of website you have. You may have an ecommerce site, a review site, an informational blog or even just a site promoting your brick and mortar store. Whether you are trying to get consumers to buy a product, read your blog or subscribe to your newsletter, when we place an ad, our aim is to get consumers to click on it.
One place that advertisers have been flocking to purchase ad space is Facebook. With options to choose your target market by demographics, among other targeting options, advertising on Facebook has been appealing to businesses of almost every industry. Conventionally, click-through rates on Facebook are smaller than what you might imagine. The average rate can be anywhere from as low as .05%. Of course, there are differences in the click-through rate for sidebar ads versus newsfeed ads. The more prominent newsfeed ads perform at an average rate of “1.19% in September, compared to a .04% average rate for right sidebar ads during the same period” (Stambor, 2013). The biggest difference between the newsfeed ads and sidebar ads are the size and prominence on the web page.
In order to increase this statistic, Facebook has announced that it will be changing the design of the ads. This new look will be created in order to encourage higher click-through rates. “Photos are 50 to 100 times larger in the new design. The font on link previews is also larger. Overall, individual ads, posts, and stories can take up to twice as much screen space than they did in the old design, which means there are fewer things competing for their attention as users scroll through the feed” (AmPush, 2013). This is good for advertisers on a couple of levels. The first is that we have higher visibility. The second is that the bigger the picture and/or link text, the better the chance that the Facebook user will click through to our intended destination.
Facebook has realized that advertisers are not only concerned about the visibility of their ad, but the measurable action taken by those who have seen it. To remedy this, Facebook is also simplifying the way that advertisers can purchase and place ads. The new “objective-based” buying will allow us to buy ads by determining an ideal click-through rate. “Advertisers will now choose from a number of possible objectives for their ad campaigns — such as driving clicks to their website, getting more Likes for their Facebook Pages, or driving app installs — then Facebook will recommend the ads that will help meet that objective” (Ha, 2013). This new simplification will change the landscape of Facebook advertising for all online marketers. Be sure to check on your Facebook campaigns frequently to take advantage of the new objective-based buying as soon as it is implemented!
Happy connecting!
References:
AmPush. (2013). Why Facebook’s redesigned news feed will push click through rates to new heights. Retrieved from: http://www.ampush.com/why-facebooks-redesigned-news-feed-will-push-click-through-rates-to-new-heights/
Ha, A. (2013). Facebook continues to simplify ad buying with new ‘objective-based’ interface. Tech Crunch. Retrieved from: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/08/facebook-objective-based-ad-buying/
Stambor, Z. (2013). Facebook ads’ click-through rates soar in Q3. Internet Retailer. Retrieved from: http://www.internetretailer.com/2013/10/17/facebook-ads-click-through-rates-soar-q3
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