Facebook Ad Performance: Do They Even Work? [Infographic]

We are constantly faced with new and more optimized advertising solutions, or at least that is what the companies behind the new ad formats wants us to believe. Facebook has always struggled to find a format that works best for them. Facebook is a tricky website to monetize since you don’t want to clutter the user with a whole lot of ads. One could say that the Facebook’s ad performance pretty much depends on Facebook’s ability to incorporate “hidden” ads into user generated information.

The word “hidden” might sound fishy, and that is by all means unintentional. What I mean by hidden is that Facebook always needs to make sure that their ads are stylishly and unobtrusively incorporated into the user information presented on each page, if you know what I mean. Facebook’s ad performance is pretty much limited by this fact. The approach Facebook has chosen to take is of course a genius one. They decided to incorporate the search feature, much like Google does, into their ad presentations. That in itself could cause a huge increase in Facebook’s ad performance.

It’s not hard to start comparing Facebook’s ad performance with that of Google’s Display Ad Network. However, it is a little unfair to compare the two since their reach is so different from one another. Facebook’s reach is only 51% of all Internet users, while Google’s display advertising networking reaches 91%. That in itself makes it quite hard to make any solid comparison between the two.

We can clearly see the differences between the two ad networks and ad performances when we consult an infographic called Facebook Ads: Do They Even Work? presented by WordStream. The statistics speak their own language, but you will at least see a comparison between Google’s and Facebook’s ad performance. Apparently Facebook is experiencing a drop in click through rate to a measly 0.051%. That should be compared to the average click through rate in America which is 0.1%. We can further compare that to our own (Bit Rebels) click through rate which is 0.2% on average.

As you see, Facebook is still struggling with how to best present appealing and clickable ads which their users are interested in. Knowing Facebook’s ad performance is so low might keep many advertisers away. However, one should remember that Facebook is a networking service and nothing else. People are not expecting to find stuff to buy when they are networking, are they? Maybe that is the reason why their click through rate is getting ever lower.

If you are thinking about advertising on either Facebook or Google’s display ad network, you should definitely have a look at these ad performance statistics and make a decision that way. Further research is of course advised, but you will get an overall idea how these two major networks mount up when compared to each other.