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FBX News Feed Ad Study: CTRs 21X Higher, CPCs 79% Lower Than Standard Retargeting

Ginny Marvin on June 27, 2013 at 5:41 pm

When Facebook introduced its retargeting platform, Facebook Exchange (FBX), last year it was a nearly instant success, with partners raving about performance metrics. Then, earlier this year, Facebook opened up its News Feed to retargeting. We’ve seen early positive reports on News Feed retargeting, and now Ad Roll has released its latest data on FBX in the News Feed.

AdRoll looked at over 1 billion impressions from 547 advertisers running retargeting campaigns on FBX right-hand side, FBX News Feed and standard web retargeting. After just one month, News Feed FBX accounted for 15 percent of AdRoll’s clicks, despite having just 0.5 percent of the total ad impressions.

News Feed FBX, which uses the Page Post Link Ad unit, had higher click-through rates (CTRs) and lower cost-per-click (CPC) than both right-hand side FBX and standard retargeting campaigns.

CPCs in the News Feed retargeting campaigns were 54 percent lower than the cost of right-hand side campaigns and 79 percent lower than web retargeting.
News Feed FBX click-through rates were 49 times higher than right-hand side campaigns and 21 times higher than standard web retargeting.
Click-through conversion rates were slightly lower at 9 percent under web retargeting and 16 percent lower than right-hand side conversion rates.
Looking at a blended CPA, News Feed FBX was 63 percent lower than web and 6 percent lower than right-hand side FBX.

Despite the CPC and CTR advantages, AdRoll finds that right-hand side and News Feed retargeting campaigns complement each other. The company recommends running News Feed FBX in conjunction with other efforts because it doesn’t have the level of reach or scale of right-hand side and standard retargeting channels. AdRoll finds News Feed FBX ideal for supporting content marketing and promotional efforts, which are particularly well suited to the social features integrated into the News Feed Page Post Link Ads. Right-hand side ads continue to perform well with dynamic product ads for direct response.

The social elements of Page Post Link Ads add a new dimension to News Feed retargeting. AdRoll says when they ran their first FBX News Feed ad, it received over 235 likes and 100 positive comments in its first week. That same ad also received 1,867 views from the connections of those who had engaged with the ad by liking, sharing or commenting on it.

AdRoll ran a test to see if running FBX campaigns in both the News Feed and the right-hand side congruently would lead to cannibalization or incremental traffic. They looked at 258 advertisers and found that News Feed ads helped lift total FBX ad clicks by 62%. Notably, CPCs overall on FBX fell 30% for the 7 day test period.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media's Associate Editor, assisting with the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.