Report: Facebook ads give a boost to small business

By: Contributor  //  Uncategorized, US News

Facebook ads are giving a boost to small business, according to a newly published research report released by the social media giant.

Facebook’s report claims that “mobile-heavy Facebook paid media exposure caused a statistically significant lift in search referral traffic volume to advertiser websites, predominantly on mobile.”

According to Facebook, more than 1.4 billion people use the site and more than 900 million visit every day. The results of their survey, as reported by Small Business Trends, showed:

1. Consumers who were exposed to Facebook ads were more likely to conduct a new search on mobile.

2. Referral search traffic climbed to 12.8 percent in some cases.

3. The average lift for mobile search referral traffic was six percent.

4. The average lift for desktop search referral traffic was less than one percent (but the study points out that since 70 percent of Facebook ads were in a mobile format, this data is consistent with the “same-device stickiness” in the consumer journey that is typical for e-commerce).

5. Small businesses saw the largest variance in lift.

6. Facebook says there’s more research to be done: “We hypothesize that lift in search traffic due to Facebook paid media exposure may correlate with a combination of other factors, such as organic content, the reach and frequency of the Facebook campaign, the amount of paid search media weight and other digital or media weight during the campaign period.”

When consumers were exposed to Facebook ads in the automotive sector they were more likely to search for branded keywords versus non-branded keywords.

Also seeing a boost was the financial and retail sectors. WordStream reports that Facebook ads receive over 22 billion clicks per year.

While Facebook ads are bringing more exposure to small businesses across the country and around the world, users do have the option of hiding ads and making sure they never see them again. A small “x” in the upper right hand corner of each ad can be clicked and a menu will appear with several selections that allow the user to hide the ad and another menu option where users are asked why they don’t want to see the particular ad. Repeating the process whenever an ad appear greatly reduces the number of ads that appear on a person’s page.

Overall research has shown that more consumers now pay more attention to Internet ads than they do those appearing on television.

Image: Flickr/Thos Ballantyne