I wrote a few months ago about the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook after some research suggested there were clear subliminal benefits to having your ad appear next to a profile of someone with the same personality traits as your product. Which is all very nice, if a little woolly for my tastes.
Some new research by TBG Digital has an altogether more practical air to it however. They've investigated the averge click through rate on Facebook ads and done some analysis to determine which day is most effective. Interestingly they found that Sunday represented the best day, with a click through rate some 12% higher than on Monday, which was the worst performing day.
The Facebook ad platform uses a combination of click through rate, cost per click and cost per impression to determine how often ads are served. In a similar way to Adwords, the better performing ads appear more frequently, so ads with a low CTR have to up their bids to get the same number of impressions. With data showing that CTR's are higher on weekends, it might therefore be worth shifting your advertising to weekends to take advantage of the apparently higher CTR.
TBG Digital CEO Simon Mansell says the daily differences in CTR are likely related to supply and demand, as well as changes in how people use Facebook through the week. When there is more traffic on Facebook, but the same number of advertisers running ads, the frequency of ads shown per person may increase. Higher frequency general results in lower CTR.
Of course another possibility could be that people simply use Facebook differently throughout the week. Mondays might for instance be used for catching up with what friends have been doing over the weekend or browsing their photos. They might be doing all of this at work so have to be quick and therefore clicking on ads is the last thing on their mind.
I'm still far from convinced that Facebook advertising is worth doing, but this kind of data could help you make the most of it if you do want to try it out. I would recommend doing your own analysis however as no two campaigns are going to be the same.
All relative though isn't it? I mean if the weekend performance is still bloody awful but it's better than week days, it doesn't make it anything less than awful.
I love Facebook ads. They always generate great results for myself or clients.
Didn't think about it before that weekends are better than weekdays though. Makes heaps of sense. Usually on the weekends people are at home, relaxed and more likely to click around everywhere.
What sort of return are you seeing Phillipa?
I wonder what the click through rate for each day is? The chart shows the variance but not the absolute numbers.
It makes sense. I wonder if this holds true for all social networks? It would actually be interesting to even see a side by side comparison of a few social networks. I like the graphic pictorially describing your title. Great idea to do a post on this since I'm sure a lot of people would miss out on an important metric such as this one.
Hmmm, I can certainly see how performance for Facebook ads is better on weekends as perhaps people are less distracted than during weekdays, checking their account while at work, feeding babies, doing homework or watching TV. Yet, the danger with such aggregated data is that is leads to believe there is one better time or day to post of Facebook, advertize or tweet. Truth is, it varies greatly per industry and per target audience.
So… interesting research and post, but I also remain unconvinced by Facebook ads at this stage. Unless it's part of a mix, with clear objectives behind it.
Cheers,
Obviously the reason why facebook advertising is effective on weekends because there are a lot of people who are free on weekends and most of them are using facebook. make sense?