Great article in the Washington Post by Robin Wauters about measuring the value of social media advertising. I wanted to direct you to it and share some of the highlights.
According to Nielsen, the report leverages six months of research consisting of surveys of more than 800,000 Facebook users and more than 125 individual Facebook ad campaigns from some 70 brand advertisers.
Nielsen took a look at 14 Facebook ad campaigns that incorporated the Become A Fan engagement unit and sliced the effectiveness results three different ways, by each of the types of ads available on Facebook: 1) Lift from a standard Homepage Ad 2) Lift from an ad that featured social context or Homepage ads with Social Context 3) Lift from Organic Ads, newsfeed stories that are sent to friends of users who engage with advertising on a brand.
Nielsen found that the first type of ads on average generated a 10% increase in ad recall, a 4% increase in brand awareness and a 2% increase in purchase intent among users who saw them compared with a control group with similar demographics or characteristics who didn't.
According to Nielsen, that increase in advertising recall jumped to 16% when ads included mentions of friends who were 'fans', and 30% when the ads coincided with a similar mention in users' newsfeeds. Intent for purchase climbed 2% higher among viewers of homepage ads vs. non-viewers but went up 8% either from social ads or when ads appeared alongside organic mentions of the brand in the news feed. Brand awareness went up 2% from just a homepage ad, 8% with a social ad and 13% when a homepage ad appeared along with a mention of friends who were brand fans in the users' newsfeeds.
