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Knowing about the latest Facebook ad stats indeed makes you an expert and gives a positive kickstart to your PPC results. PPC and Facebook resources provides a baseline for testing and a real eye-opener as you grasp the best practice.
Following the wrong Facebook ad stats for your campaign results, can be surprising in a bad way. You must beware, several factors impact results and usage too, such as the industry type or product offering. Your campaigns can produce different results due to this.
According to a research in 2016, eight-in-ten online Americans (80%) use Facebook. If you consider counting the people who do not use the Internet, 70% of all U.S. adults are Facebook users.
In comparison to other social media platforms, it’s more than double the people using Twitter (24%), Pinterest (31%), Instagram (32%), or even LinkedIn (29%).
About 80% of people use Facebook actively as shown in the above image.
According to another report, 76% of Facebook users claim, they visit the site daily, 55% visit it several times in a day, 22% visit once in a day.
The daily active user rate is higher than other social media sites: Instagram (51%), Twitter (42%), LinkedIn (18%), and Pinterest (25%).
Facebook has remained the most used social media platform amongst all age groups with 65% of them using Facebook, reports claim.
Among 12-24-year-olds, it is overtaken by Snapchat (72%) with Instagram not far away (66%).
If you want to ensure that you reach the largest number of people, combine Facebook ads with Instagram and Twitter ads. Don’t forget about Snapchat and LinkedIn too.
Statista’s data show world over, about 38.6% of the online population and almost 30% of the total population uses Facebook.
Google Play celebrated its fifth birthday in March 2017, it listed its most downloaded of all time.
Two of the TOP 5 spots in the ‘most downloaded apps’ list belong to Facebook.
In reference to a list of the world’s TOP 2,000 company, Forbes compiled in May 2017- Facebook is the sixth most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
As of current stats, Facebook’s current market value is nearly $407 billion.
During the first quarter of Facebook, in 2016 earnings, Mark Zuckerberg told:
“People around the world spend on average more than 50 minutes a day using Facebook, Instagram and Messenger…and that doesn’t count WhatsApp.
In July 2014, the stats declared American users spending 40 minutes per day on Facebook’s, as per TechCrunch.
If you desire reaching your target audience across all social platforms, test a combination of Facebook and Instagram ads.
Another research’s data shows 90% of people using Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest, have a Facebook account they’re actively using too.
Amongst people who only use one social platform, about 88% indicate – Facebook is one site that they surely use
This implies that the audience you’re trying to engage on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest can be effectively reached with Facebook ads.
According to Advertising Age, Facebook accounts for nearly 62% of social logins in 2015 tracked by a company that provides tools for brands and publishers to allow people log into their sites and apps using their Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo or any other accounts.
Facebook is also followed by Google (24%), Twitter (7%), and Yahoo (4%).
Facebook and Google are preferences for login in nearly 100% of the websites. Twitter is preferable is about 72% of the sites and Yahoo by 35% of sites.
A report by AdvertisingAge told that the lead of Facebook is much more visible when mobile logins are considered. Research has processed 58 million social logins across 700 brands and publisher sites in the 4th quarter 2015.
80% of mobile social logins were attributed to Facebook.
Number of people use the traditionally “personal” social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) for professional purposes, a report of 2017 claims.
75% of respondents use Facebook professionally, almost catching up with 78% of LinkedIn users – a network designed for professional usage.
This graph proves that brands an succeed using their B2B campaigns on Facebook.
A report from TechCrunch claims, Facebook’s been around since 2004 and the users have made over 2.5 trillion posts till date.
Now, you can simply use Facebook’s Promoted Posts to make your messages more visible.
If you’re wondering if anyone is using the Facebook’s Search box, some people definitely are.
According to TechCrunch reporting in 2016, the average of 2 billion monthly searches was made on Facebook’s platform.
An astounding amount of content is produced on Facebook every minute. According to an infographic by Dealhack, Facebook users generate 4 million likes every minute.
In addition, every 60 seconds,
– Around 500 new users join Facebook
– Nearly 100,000 friend requests are sent
– More than 243,000 photos are uploaded on Facebook
– Close to 50,000 links are shared on Facebook
– About 3,3 million items are shared on Facebook
According to a study in 2017 by eMarket, nearly 42% of millennial respondents claimed not have lasted five hours without checking their feeds.
Data on Facebook shows that in 2015, people left 2.5 million comments on Facebook pages every month.
According to AdWeek, Facebook Reactions have been around for almost one and a half years. During its first year of availability, the Reactions were used by over 300 billion times.
The love reaction is the most used reaction on Facebook.
The Social Media Marketing report 2017, reveals that when asked to select their most important platform, 62% of marketers prefer Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 16%. Compared to 2016 results, the preference for Facebook increased from 55% to 62% in 2017.
Facebook proving to be the most beloved social media platform.
A similar report revealed Facebook is the number one choice for 72% of B2C marketers when it comes to social advertising channels.
However, for the first time in the history, Facebook has passed LinkedIn as the most important platform for B2B marketers, with 43 marketers naming it their top choice.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are the prefered four platforms used by social media marketers, with Facebook leading the pack – 94% of marketers use Facebook, according to the Social Media Marketing Report 2017.
A report by Forbes claimed by the end of 2015, over 50 million businesses were using Facebook Business Pages. Now, the number has soared to 65M+ companies.
Facebook pages make it easier to reach and engage with large audiences, especially on mobile.
According to a research, the most followed Facebook page is ‘Facebook for Every Phone’, with 497,066,390 likes.
The second and third places are held by Facebook (188,000,726 likes) and football sensation Cristiano Ronaldo(121,273,970 likes)
According to Syncapse, 42% of the 2,000 respondents likely “to get a coupon or discount” as one reason they fan a brand on Facebook. The top reason is “to support the brand I like.”
If you want to get more likes to your page, you could try target the friends of your fans. People are more likely to like pages also liked by their friends.
Kentico’s research revealed 2/5 Facebook users do not like any branded pages.
When asked how many brands they Like on Facebook, 39% said 1-10, 7% said 11-20, and 6% said 21-30. 40% of the people questioned don’t like any branded Facebook pages.
Social Media Examiner surveyed social media marketers and found out that on average, they post on a branded Facebook page 8 times per day.
39% of marketers have increased their posting frequency on Facebook over the last year. 15% have decreased their posting frequency.
As reported by AdWeek, in March 2015, the average Facebook page post reached 2.5% of the page’s fans. This means, 97% of your Facebook page’s fans may not see your post.
However, the situation is better for smaller brands. For pages having under 1,000 likes, the avg. organic post reach was between 14%-23%.
From January 2016 through mid-July 2016, publishers of Facebook Pages experienced a 52% decline in organic reach.
This leads to fewer clicks, comments, and shares.
According to a study in 2015, brands have made an increase in their post promotion on Facebook by 80% from 2013 through to 2015.
The graph here just shows how the positive trend has been growing over time.
In March 2016, three million companies all over the world used Facebook’s paid ads to reach the target audience, with more than 70% from outside U.S.
In April 2017, the number has soared to 5 million advertisers!
Majority of Facebook’s advertisers are small and medium sized businesses.
According to a report recently, a massive 93% of social marketers use Facebook ads regularly and 64% plan to increase their Facebook ads activities.
In November 2015, as per TechCrunch, Facebook climbed to 8 billion video views daily. Even at a mere 3 seconds per view, Facebook generates 760 years of watch time every single day.
As per RecodeNet, more than around 500 million Facebook users indulge in watching Facebook videos every day.
In May Facebook claimed, its users watch more than 100 million hours of video every day.
Videos are becoming even more popular as a medium. Therefore, it’s indeed a good idea to test Facebook video ads and A/B test them against any static image ads.
As per eMarketer, Facebook’s native videos have an average engagement rate of 6.3%, compared to 3.2% for YouTube videos and 0.2% for Instagram videos.
The above table measures the performance metrics of videos posted and an analysis is made thereof.
The eMarketer’s study revealed that many brands created video posts native to Facebook. About two-thirds (65%) of brand video posts on Facebook are Facebook native. Around 24% of video posts to the social network are links to YouTube.
A report by Kinetic Social in 2015, showed that video ads have the lowest eCPC, with an average eCPC of close to $0.18.
37. 85% of Facebook videos are consumed without sound
According to a survey of multiple publishers, about 85 percent of video views happen with the sound off
Facebook analyzed how people reacted with Facebook video campaigns. The data showed that people who watched under three seconds of the video ad create up to 47 percent of the total campaign value.
Facebook’s tests have shown that captioned video ads increased video view time by an average of 12%.
A research showed that most people (80%) do not like when a Facebook news feed video starts playing automatically with the sound on.
As social video ad spending share saw a continuous increase between the 1st and 4th quarter of 2016, signs show that the growth will be slowing down, according to reports from eMarketer.
In a media release of 2016, Facebook’s Product Manager wrote that users spend an average of more than 3 times watching a Facebook Live video in comparison to a video that’s no longer live.
According to WallStreetJournal, Facebook is indeed paying influencers, publishers, and celebrities $2.2M from the total pool of $50+ million to promote Facebook videos, and especially Facebook Live videos.
A report states – Instagram will make up 20% of Facebook’s U.S. mobile revenue in 2017.
If you’re already advertising on Facebook’s mobile platform, you could test including Instagram feed in your ad placements.
A report by Social Media Examiner shows that while Facebook advertising stats show a growth trend, many marketers are still unsure whether their Facebook marketing efforts are paying off.
When asked whether their Facebook marketing strategy is effective, only 45% of B2C and 37% of B2B social marketers agreed.
According to a report in 2017 by eMarketer, Facebook is expected to bring in $36.29 billion in worldwide ad revenues this year. It is up by 35% from 2016.
Within the digital display category, Facebook is No. 1 by a wide margin.
According to CNBC, in THE 1st quarter of 2017, Facebook earned $7.86 billion in advertising revenue, up 51 percent from a year ago.
The main factors that have helped Facebook to grow its ad revenue:
According to predictions, the pace of growth for Facebook’s ad revenue will be markedly lower by 2018 than it was in 2016. eMarketer forecasts 26.5% growth in 2018—less than half the pace of 57.4% increase seen in 2016.
According to Facebook’s 2016 4th quarter, Earning’s report, mobile advertising accounts for 84% of its ad revenue.
If you’re not yet using Facebook’s mobile ads, it’s time to get started!
According to a report on U.S. advertising in 2017, mobile will be the main driver of digital’s growth in 2017, accounting for 70% of digital and more than one-quarter of total media outlays.
According to Facebook’s Earning report in 2016, the average revenue per user is $4.73 worldwide. However, it’s a lot higher in the U.S. ($19.81) and also in the EU ($5.86).
The average Facebook ad CTR across all industries is 0.90%. Following is a list of the average click-through rates in specific industries, shared by Wordstream:
A report by Wordstream revealed that the average conversion rate is highest in the fitness industry (14.29%) and education (13.58%). It’s the lowest in the technology (2.31%) sector.
When analyzing the 2016 4th quarter, Facebook ad stats, it was found that the average cost-per-click of Facebook ads is $0.35. In the U.S., the average CPC is $0.26.
On being compared by gender, the CPC tends to be higher when advertising to female audiences, according to research. In the 4th quarter of 2016, the average CPC for female audiences was $0.24 and $0.19 for male target groups.
A research also showed that it’s more expensive to be advertising to audiences aged between 45-65+ years, compared to people aged 18-44 years.
It’s cheaper to advertise to younger audiences.
According to a research by AdExpreso, Facebook ads CPC in 2016 was highest in October and November. The cheapest months for Facebook advertising in 2016 were June and July.
In the 3rd quarter of 2016, the average cost-per-clicks across different Facebook ad placements were the following, as per a report:
According to AdEspresso’s analysis of Facebook ad costs, the cost-per-click of Facebook ads is highest on Fridays ($0.27), followed by Thursday ($0.25).
However, this is a general statistic and the CPC may vary depending on your industry, audience, offer, and many other factors.
The cheapest time to advertise on Facebook is shockingly the most popular one – the evening commute. The research showed that the average CPC between 4p.m. and 8p.m. is around $0.23.
A research ran a Facebook ads experiment where the Desktop ad placement (average CPA $4,625) had a 34% higher cost-per-acquisition compared to Mobile ads (average CPA $3,188).
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If your goal is to drive clicks at a low cost AdEspresso recommends that you use one of these campaign objectives:
The report by Wordstream does not mention what exactly they meant by cost per action, its sure they meant the cost per conversion or cost per acquisition.
As per the report, the average cost per action (CPA) for Facebook ads is $18.68. It’s around three times higher for the technology ($55.21) sector and a lot lower for education ($7.85).
AdEspresso analyzed plenty of Facebook ad campaigns and found out that the average cost per 1,000 ad impressions is $7.19, and $7.34 for ALL objectives.
A research by AdEspresso showed that, for campaigns created with the Page Likes objective, the cost-per-like at an average was $0.26 in 2016. It was even lower with Mobile newsfeed ad placement ($0.10).
A research also showed that the average cost-per-like is the lowest for mobile Facebook ads. In 2016, the cost-per-like at an average for mobile placement was $0.10, compared to $0.23 for desktop and $0.21 for right-hand column.
According to an AdEspresso’s research, the cost per app install is highest in the UK, Germany, and the U.S. The average cost per app install for Facebook ads is around $1.70.
It’s best to advertise your mobile app in Facebook’s mobile newsfeed. A research shows that the cost per app install is lowest for the Audience Network ad placement ($0.62).
Cost per app install by placement
If you’re not sure which device users to target with your Facebook ads promoting a mobile app, test advertising to Android tablet and smartphone users.
It’s more expensive at times to get iPad and iPhone users to download your mobile app, AdEspresso found.
Android tablets have the lowest cost per app install.
AdEspresso’s Facebook research reveals that 69% of all Facebook ads link to a landing page. 20% of ads link to a Facebook page and 11% to the company’s home page.
Ad frequency is an ad metric on Facebook showing how many times your target audience has seen your Facebook ads on average.
AdEspresso found that once your ad frequency reaches 2 people having seen your ad, the average CPC increases by 49.82% and the CTR decreases by 8.91%.
Higher ad frequency = Higher costs
AdEspresso ran a Facebook ads experiment. They tested 3 different Lookalike Audiences: 1% Lookalike, 5% Lookalike, and 10% Lookalike.
The 10% Lookalike Audience had a 70% higher cost-per-conversion than the 1% Lookalike Audience.
Buffer tested what advertisers can get for a $5/day ad spend on Facebook. They discovered that you could get 9 page likes at $0.57 per like.
According to an experiment by Buffer, the average cost per landing page click to a B2B website costs $4.01. However, if you’re able to create highly relevant Facebook ads, this number could be a lot smaller.
In one of the experiment’s, Buffer’s team uncovered that reaching an additional 1,000 people with your Facebook ad campaigns will cost $6.00.
However, Buffer was targeting a B2B audience in a competitive industry. You can get results by low budgets.
Another key takeaway from Buffer’s Facebook ad experiment is – boosting a Facebook page post for $5 helped them reach 787 people on average.
Buffer’s advertising costs were really high compared to the industry average.
As per Post Planner’s research, 75% of the engagement you get on your posts happen within the first 5 hours.
After that, engagement does die off.
A case study by Post Planner showed that 75% of impressions happen in the first 150 minutes after publishing your Facebook post.
This means once your Facebook post has been published for 2.5 hours, it may be a good time to boost it for further reach.
According to Socialbakers, the organic reach of Facebook posts depends on the size of your Facebook fanbase. The fewer page likes you have, the more will they see your post in their newsfeed.
Buffer looked into the best times to be publishing on various social media platforms. They found out that you could potentially get the highest post engagement when posting between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.
On the weekends, it’s between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m.
As per Facebook’s ad copywriting, most marketers prefer to use headlines that are 4-6 words long.
While analyzing numerous Facebook ads, AdEspresso discovered that the length for ad post text is a mere 14 words.
The Facebook ad link description is longer than the main copy, averaging at 18 words, as reported by AdEspresso.
A research shows that Facebook ads with a call-to-action button can potentially return 2.85 times better results.
As per AdEspresso, the the widely used Facebook ad CTAs are:
Another ad experiment run on Facebook was where they tested three different call to actions: “Download Now, ”Sign Up “,” and “Learn More.” The goal of their campaign was get people download an eBook.
The “Download” CTA outperformed the “Learn More” CTA by 50.6% and the “Sign Up” CTA by 40.4% regarding the cost per lead.
According to Statista’s experiment in 2017, Facebook has 1.9 billion monthly active users.
The MAU (monthly active users) metric is calculated by counting unique users that have visited a site/app during a period of 30-days
A report by TechCrunch, at the end of 2015 claims Facebook had 827 million mobile-only users.
80 million people are using Facebook Lite globally – a simplified app that brings the essential Facebook experience to budget phones with 2G connections, as reported.
This means the potential to reach people is high even in the less-developed countries.
During the 4th quarter in 2016 earnings report, Facebook revealed that appropriately 900 million people are using WhatsApp and 800 million people are using Messenger every month.
According to CNET (2012), Facebook claimed 8.7 percent or 83.09 million of its user accounts were fake. However, there’s no updated number on this.
Facebook’s user base has almost doubled throughout 2012-2017, but it has also taken specific measures to fight the fake accounts.
Facebook ad stats from 2015 showed that every second, 6 new Facebook profiles were created.Hence almost every day, half a million Facebook accounts were created.
According to a report by Pew Research Centre in 2016, 75% of male and 83% of female Internet users are on Facebook. That’s a potential audience that you can reach.
77% of 14- to 17-year-olds report using the social media platform. Also, nearly 23% of teen girls used Tumblr and 33% of American teens use Twitter.
According to a survey in 2015 by Pew Research Center, 72% teenage boys and 70% teenage girls are Facebook users.
The average number of Facebook friends in 2013 was 338, and the median number of friends 200, Pew Research Centre claims.
If you can share content that’s relevant and interesting to your target audience, chances are they’ll give it a like or share, making your Facebook post appear in their friends’ newsfeeds.
The Telegraph reported that female users have more Facebook friends on average than men: 166 compared to 145.
When asked why they’re using Facebook, 47% of the people named seeing photos and videos posted by the people in their network.
When asked what they dislike most about Facebook in a survey, 57% respondents say – “People posting pictures of your children without permission.”
Other popular answers included “People posting things about you or pictures of you without your permission” (36%) and “People sharing too much information about themselves” (36%).
As per ‘Pew Research Centre’, 50% of Internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does, making it possible to reach a larger audience via their family members.
Among Facebook users, 83% of parents say they’re “Facebook friends” with their teenagers while 17% of Twitter users follow their children on the platform, reports have shown.
According to a report in 2016, two-thirds of Facebook’s user base read their news on the social platform, with 59% of Twitter users getting news on Twitter, and 70% of Reddit users doing the same with their platforms.
According to an institute, Facebook as a news source is highly popular among millennials, with 88% of them reporting getting news from Facebook once in awhile.
According to Pew Research Centre, in 2013, only 47% of people reported Facebook as a news source The number had then increased to 66% by 2016.
When ‘hashtags’ are mentioned, people automatically think of Twitter or Instagram. It’s a feature that Facebook introduced recently, so people don’t expect to see them as much as they do when they’re on Twitter.
The same study from TrackMaven revealed that posts with hashtags see 60% more interaction on average.
To get the best out of hashtags on Facebook, you should use them strategically and link your posts to trending topics and relevant discussions.
Social media analytics company Socialbakers analyzed over 670,000 posts by 4,445 brands and researched that native video content has the best organic reach of all types of content on Facebook.
It makes sense to pay Facebook to boost your content through advertising if you want to reach someone. This has a lot to do with the fact that Facebook, now a public company, has to show profits to its shareholders.
When we mention engagement, there is a lot to understand. Shareaholic analyzed over 250 million unique visits coming from social media sites and it concluded that YouTube drives the best traffic.
The traffic coming from YouTube shows the highest engagement and lowest bounce rate.
Engagement is a fabulous metric. However, no level of engagement can beat the paying customer. At the end, business with no customers is not really a business.
And while Instagram is smaller than Facebook there are 2 more reasons why you should invest in your Instagram strategy.
The first one being the cross-posting feature. Once a user shares something in relation to your brand it can also reach all other networks of that user. The second: everyone understands pictures, no matter what language they speak.
While data on Facebook reach isn’t encouraging, it turns out that the users are likelier to click on the links in your post on Facebook than any other platform.
According to a study by Shareaholic, Facebook is the top referral platform among all social media sites.
When Facebook posts struggle to reach 6% of your own fans, Instagram is all about good news.
According to TrackMaven, Instagram has the highest percentage of content going viral. Not only it outperforms all other social networks, it stands out with 49% of photos and 60% of videos, thereby reaching 250+ interactions.
Focus on the super-users, is the advice.It so turns out, that it may not be most viable strategy after all.
A social monitoring app Mention analyzed over 1 billion brand mentions on Twitter and around 91% of those mentions came from users with less than 500 followers.
It turns out that LinkedIn is great for B2B. But that’s not surprising. What’s surprising, is that the content published on LinkedIn can be quite effective.
According to a recent user study, LinkedIn users do not only value its content, they also actively seek it as source of industry news and professional advice.
As it speaks for itself, LinkedIn plays a big role in your social media and content marketing strategy.
Twitter is a great customer support channel. Among the companies using Twitter for customer service are the big brands like Nike, Amazon, etc.
It could also be a huge error, if you don’t pay enough attention to it. According to a Lithium study, 65% of Twitter users expect a response in less than 2 hours.
About 50% of U.S. adults over 65 are now using Facebook, according to Statista. Also, 63% of U.S. adults over 50-65 are using it too.
This makes Seniors 5 times more likely to use Facebook than Twitter, where they represent just 12%.
Millennials age 18-24 represent the most users on SnapChat, Vine, and Tumblr. In general, the 25-34 age group has the most dominant presence on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
However, LinkedIn stands out with 35-44 year-olds leading the way.
Conclusion
There are indeed plenty of factors to consider and look unto when deciding a cool strategy.
Let us know your opinions below and what you feel would be your favored approach to achieving your social media objectives.
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