PPCA Very Revealing Look at Paid Facebook Ads

A Very Revealing Look at Paid Facebook Ads

With the use of social media outlets as a trend for personal, business, and other uses, Facebook PPC ads are a noteworthy promotion method all-around. Exploring the foundation of these ads can be extremely revealing regardless of your industry.

With the use of social media outlets as a trend for personal, business, and other uses, Facebook PPC ads are a noteworthy promotion method all-around. Exploring the foundation of these ads can prove to be extremely revealing regardless of your industry.

Limited information may be available on certain social media analytic tools, but examining paid Facebook ads provides an in-depth abundance of information. To research the numerous facets of Facebook PPC and complete an analysis, we are going to utilize both SEMrush Facebook data and additional resources.

Currently, Facebook is one of the top three pay-per-click resources in the world and the exact position depends on how you are going to count in terms of clicks, views, or potential audiences, and some additional details are presented below.

Domains vs. Groups vs. Apps

Unlike Google or Bing pay-per-click, advertisers have a tendency to promote groups and applications very aggressively on Facebook. In terms of the amount of copies: 58 percent of Facebook ads advertise domains, 3 percent advertise apps, and the remaining 39 percent feature Facebook groups. Therefore, 42 percent of Facebook ads do not send users beyond Facebook itself.

We can conclude that the Facebook PPC publisher considers the PPC to be a semi-closed infrastructure. We cannot obtain accurate numbers for advertising budgets and the quantity of click, but we can do some estimation.

It appears as though the actual clicks confirm the publisher expectation and in spite of the fact that only 39 percent of ads feature groups, they are responsible for 56 percent of entire clicks. The probability of a click on a group ad is ~50 percent higher than the chances of a click on an external domain ad.

What can we say – if you don’t have a page for your business on Facebook but allocate funds to the PPC there, you may want to reconsider and generate a page!

content-type-domains-apps-groups-facebook

Countries

Ten countries control 50 percent of entire Facebook PPC. Yes, the U.S., UK, and Germany are top 3 (that was predictable). But who would have thought that Indonesia and the Philippines would follow?

Interestingly enough, the data popularity of Facebook PPC doesn’t correlate with Alexa’s relative popularity in different countries. Some of these differences can be explained by the economy levels of some of these countries.

According to Alexa, India is the second country on Facebook while the UK is the sixth. Our data says that the UK is responsible for 6.1 percent of Facebook ads, right behind the U.S., which consumes 18 percent of all ads.

Although India is substantially larger than the UK in terms of population, we need to take into consideration that the economy in the UK is much more developed, which in turn causes higher competition and therefore more businesses turn to Facebook as a means of their advertising. How Indonesia may have made it to the top is a cause for speculation.

ads-by-countries-facebook

We also have to take into consideration that different countries are more concerned with different types of content. For example, if U.S. users were to receive 10 percent of all apps advertising but 13.9 percent of domains and 15.7 percent of groups advertising, this means that U.S. companies are overall more “social” (whatever that may mean) than the rest of the world.

Next, let’s take the UK as a means to compare: 4.7 percent of all apps ads, 6 percent of all domains, and 5 percent groups.

Simply speaking, U.S. companies are ~50 percent more willing to “communicate” with their fun base. Apparently this doesn’t describe the specific approaches of companies, but is rather more about how developed the social marketing is within that country.

Top Advertisers by Domains

There are no miracles in business and top budgets are characteristically controlled by agencies. An unquestionable leader is Adobe AdLens whom they purchased and formerly called Efficient Frontier. Adobe is responsible for 11 percent of top 20 expenses and is followed by Kenshoo who has 9.3 percent with their xg4ken tracking domain.

The largest independent advertiser is Samsung who maintains 5.8 percent of the top 20 expenditure which is sensible as it seems as though their battle with Apple requires all weaponry possible.

The final member of the top advertisers is AirBnB. With the amount of funding money that they received, they can spend virtually anywhere. Apparently startup funds are a big deal now.

top-20-facebook-domains

Top Advertising Apps

It can be presumed that the folks over at Facebook don’t want to work and don’t want to study – but rather want to play, naturally, as they are generally gamers and gamblers. So it is not a surprise that the top 20 advertising apps for the entire world consist exclusively of games, but there is a single intruder in the group which is Facebook itself.

Facebook makes attempts to convince India to employ the use of Facebook PPC, and this provides a reasonable correlation to the first paragraph. As can be seen below, the most popular types of games are poker/casinos, so I guess we can presume that the legalization of online gambling in the U.S. will bring in an ample amount of money for Facebook. Las Vegas must be terrified.

top-20-facebook-apps

Note: to locate an App page, go to: apps.facebook.com/app-name. Facebook PPC India is available here.

How Some Brands Accommodate Facebook PPC

Next we’ll consider a couple of different retail brands. Our leaders (as to be expected) are Walmart, Amazon, and eBay.

Walmart is particularly active on Facebook, using ~6,500 different ads during the last three months with millions (or, more likely, billions) of impressions.

However, the great Amazon simply ignores Facebook PPC. Well, almost. It could be possible that a little bit creativity may have allowed them to escape from our radars, but it looks as though Amazon doesn’t want to delegate any funds toward a majority gamer audience.

Ebay is in the middle as they do spend money on Facebook PPC, but this money is not expended within the U.S. Ebay is very determined with their PPC expenditure in countries such as India, Thailand, and Russia and within the U.S. market, eBay activity is very low.

It appears that Walmart is just catching up and taking the lead (I mean leading in online, of course) over Amazon. If you happen to be running your own online store, this is evidence that you might find to be extremely interesting.

All of the abovementioned facts can bring us to a very simple and, frankly speaking, obvious conclusion for online retail. Despite the fact that Facebook ads are pay-per-click and pay-per-view based, it isn’t a sales tool in any way, shape, or form. Facebook ads function in terms of branding and overall recognition, but direct sales do not typically result.

Trends

The Facebook IPO created a bit of a scandal and some investors considered themselves to be cheated. Please be mindful of the fact that I am no expert in this area, but what I can do is disclose how advertisers progress to and from Facebook ads. A very simple table is displayed below that represents the amount of different ads within the Facebook system:

trends-facebook-ipo-world-us-april-june

When it comes to stocks and the investment market I am also no expert, but it seems as though there is a correlation. The United States market, who is more devoted to and active in stocks, reverted back much further than the world in general after the initial Facebook IPO. Perhaps individuals are able to perceive some connection between the IPO and Facebook advertising ability.

Some Fun Facebook Facts for Your Reading Pleasure

  • The most active bank is Facebook, accompanied by Capital One’s credit card offer. Capital One works directly with Facebook and employs mediaplex.com as well.
  • The biggest investment among all games goes to the advertising of Bubble Witch Saga. The name says it all. Bubbles and witches are quite the combination; it’s no wonder I have no idea how to play it.
  • The most popular medical topic is Gout, as represented by Gout Study.
  • The most active educational institution is, (no surprises here), Full Sail University with this landing page.
  • The most aggressive startup is Fiverr.com. Who knew that an investment as miniscule as $20 million could actually benefit a startup.
  • The most active retail brand is Walmart, as previously described.
  • Finally, and this is my personal favorite thanks to the combination of my mathematical education and twisted mentality: Facebook ad creation.

f-ck-censored-facebook

Intrigued enough to know what’s being advertised? Just look at the ad. Look harder, it’s right there!

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