What Social Media Ad Types Work Best? [STATS]
As time spent on social networking sites increases, advertisers are funneling more ad dollars into campaigns targeting users on those platforms.
But what type of ads on Facebook or other social networks work the best? To find out, Psychster Inc. teamed up with Allrecipes to determine which kinds of ads are the most effective and whether the platforms advertisements appear on make a difference.
The study (embedded below) tested seven different types of ads on two different publisher websites, Facebook and Allrecipes. The ad types evaluated were: banner ads, newsletter subscription ads, corporate profiles with fans and logos, corporate profiles without fans or logos, get widgets, give widgets and sponsored content.
The Results
- While sponsored content provided the most user interaction (and was the least likely to be perceived as advertising), it also triggered the lowest level of purchase intent and the fewest viral recommendations.
- Corporate profiles are effective but they work better when users can become a fan of the profile and add a logo to their own page.
- More people engage with give/get widgets than with banner ads, however widgets do not increase purchase intent or viral recommendations.
- Regardless of format, the most effective advertisements were those that were related to the content on the publisher’s website (i.e. a soup advertisement on a cooking website).
- Of the seven advertising types, banner ads and newsletter links were the most successful at encouraging purchase intent.
Surprisingly, the study suggests that banner ads may be the best choice for advertisers that want to push a product. However, for campaigns that want to build engagement, corporate profiles or sponsored content is the better option.
Source: http://mashable.com/2010/03/30/social-media-ad-stats/
Will online content remain free? Perhaps not.
Firstly, what are online content?
Basically it refers to information can be obtained online in text, picture or video format.
The current revenue model for online content is often generated from selling of Ad spaces within the sites.The revenues gathered from online ads often help to subsidize or pay for the creation of the free content. However, like in traditional media ,users are increasing immune to online ads, they tend to just go for the online content and not pay much attention to ads. Plus ads that pop-up can cause frustration to the user.
Perhaps in the near future more online content would become chargeable. The question that remains is what kind of online content are users more willing to shell out money and how to charge them.
By analysing survey results from a Nielsen survey.Around 85% of those survey still prefer free content but they might consider paying as well. The survey broken down what content the respondents have paid for and what content they would consider to pay.
Most surveyed answered that they are most likely to pay for content that they already paid offline. They are Movies, Music, Games and certain TV shows. Social communities, podcasts, blogs and user-generated videos are contents that most respondents feel that they should be non-chargeable.
Survey also gave an insight of what an online content should fulfill in order to get people to pay for it.
- The paid content has to be considerably better than the free version
- Consumer will stop using chargeable content if they can find similar free online content elsewhere
- Consumers who paid for online content are allowed to copy and share it with whoever they want
In conclusion, deriving revenues from online content can go beyond selling ad spaces. Free or paid content it is up to the expertise of the marketer to know which form of online content to use for their marketing.
What Social Media Users Want
Twitterers mostly consume news, MySpace users want games and entertainment, Facebookers are into both news and community and Digg’s audience has a mixed bag of interests.
This is all according to online advertising network Chitika, who set out to analyze the interests of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Digg users by comparing the genres of sites that receive traffic from these social networks. 287,090 impressions were used in the report, and based on this research, each social site has a distinct makeup of users with unique tastes.
The graphic below breaks it down. What’s most interesting is that nearly half the traffic (47%) that Twitter generates falls into the news category. In fact, Twitter users’ interest in the news genre surpasses that of Facebook users by nearly 20%, which would appear to make it the number-one social network for newsies.
Another interesting tidbit is that MySpace users have no interest in news whatsoever. Instead that corner of the web splits its interests between video games (28%) and celebrity and entertainment content (23%). This aligns with what we’ve seen in terms of MySpace’s business strategy around securing exclusive entertainment content over the past few months and where it’s likely headed for the future.
If anything this data points to the varied interests behind our current obsession with popular social networks. It’s important information for marketers, advertisers and brands hoping to appropriately leverage each site.
Source: http://mashable.com/2010/03/18/social-media-sites-data/
Facebook update: Become a Fan of a Brand by “Like”-ing it
Facebook’s making a small wording change with some potentially big implications. Now, instead of clicking a button that says “become a fan” to start following a given brand, users will simply have to “like” them.
According to an email obtained by MediaMemo, Facebook is alerting advertisers to the impending change by explaining that “Like” links offer “a simple, consistent way for people to connect with the things they are interested in … in fact, people click “Like” almost two times more than they click “Become a Fan” everyday.”
The latter part is important – it means that the change could make it easier for brand advertisers to accumulate fans quickly. But it also means that users might not totally understand what they’re opting in to. After all, becoming a fan means that you’ll start receiving updates from the brand in your News Feed.
Beyond that, it still doesn’t solve one of the main problems of Facebook’s Fan wording – while there are many Pages on Facebook I’d like to follow — because they provide information I need or would like to access — I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a “fan” of them (nor want my friends to think I am one). Perhaps that’s why Twitter’s “follow” wording still makes the most sense.
So, while this change looks to be good for brands, it remains to be seen if it will be good for users, or might even create more confusion.
Twitter takes flight! 1 Billlon tweets and growing!
Written By: Bridget Kow
Pingdom’s latest research has overthrown past speculations about twitter’s growth stalling. Twitter is as of December processing more than one billion tweets per month. January passed 1.2 billion, averaging almost 40 million tweets per day. This is significantly more than Twitter was processing just a few months ago.
The bar chart by Pingdom gives a better idea about how twitter has grown!
References : http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/10/twitter-now-more-than-1-billion-tweets-per-month/ and http://mashable.com/2010/02/10/twitter-tweet-volume/
Facebook now has over 400 Million users
It took Facebook about three months to climb from 300 to 350 million users and only about two months to gain another 50 million, indicating Facebook’s explosive growth is actually still accelerating.
Social Media is going exponentially, there is no better time to get into marketing in Social Media and tap on this goldmine.
Reference: http://mashable.com/2010/02/04/facebook-400-million/
