Costs Increase for Facebook Ads

Ads placed with Google tend to have a higher click-through rate than their Facebook counterparts; the former averages about 2 percent CTR, while the latter sees about a quarter to a half of that.  The balm is that those who choose to advertise on Facebook tend to have higher conversion rates.  More good news for advertisers: Efficient Frontier’s quarterly report finds that click-through rates on Facebook have increased by 18.5 percent in the UK.  But lest business rejoice too soon, prices for these ads are also increasing.

According to new figures, UK businesses have increased their Facebook “ad spend” by a quarter since summer.  Part of this is the result of businesses taking advantage of the boost in CTRs, while part is the increase in price.  Cost-per-click has risen as much as 54 percent.  Is it still worth using Facebook to reach customers through ads?  Efficient Frontier’s global marketing director Jonathan Beeston thinks so.  “Used well, Facebook advertising integrates [with] search and social engagement to give a combined result that is better than the sum of its parts.”

The opportunity for social engagement is there; residents of the UK spend more time browsing the internet than the residents of any other European counterpart.  The average citizen spends 35 hours online and looks at some 3,200 websites.  Facebook accounts for nearly one in six of all web pages viewed across Europe, and users boosted the average time spent on the site by 10 percent.  Businesses can leverage the interest and engagement that is already there to increase the success of marketing and PPC campaigns – it’ll just cost a little more now.