Facebook advertising performance and marketers’ investment in the channel via Skai Social continued to rise in Q4 2013, as highlighted in our latest infographic. Following previous quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) Facebook Advertising performance trends, marketers drove increased exposure and engagement through Facebook ads in Q4 as compared to Q3, generating impressive QoQ paid social gains.
Clearly, marketers anticipated that consumers would be more inclined to engage online in Q4 vs. Q3, upping their spend more than 100% to take advantage of the opportunity. As expected, consumers were in “shopping-mode” and interested in making purchases during the peak shopping season.
Core metrics saw the following improvements QoQ:
- Impressions up 51%
- Clicks up 66%
- Click-through Rate up 10%
Increases in ad spend were also attributed to heightened competition during this busy, end-of-the-year shopping season. As a result of increased competitor activity, average CPM (Cost-per-Thousand) saw a 33% increase and average CPC (Cost-per-Click) rose 21% in Q4 for Facebook ads procured through our platform.
Despite the rise in unit costs, advertiser sales revenue driven by Facebook ads saw a healthy bump, up nearly 60% QoQ for our clients. As we noted in our analysis of the key shopping dates, Skai Social clients saw as much as 15x more revenue during the 5-day seasonal shopping period (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) than they did on November 1st. Cyber Monday accounted for the highest peak in revenue over the shopping period, contributing to the overall bump in revenue for the quarter.
As marketers turn to Facebook ads to deliver on direct response goals, conversion optimization strategies will become more sophisticated. Implementing multi-touch attribution will help give more visibility and credit to instances when Facebook ads act as an influencer along the customer journey, helping driving incremental sales through other channels.
With the social advertising ecosystem maturing, marketers should be promoting their most relevant products with more refined targeting techniques and tracking each touch point on the path to conversion — across paid, owned, and earned social media as well as across search and social channels — to get the most out of their Facebook advertising. By implementing these best practices through Skai Social, advertisers should continue to see positive returns for many quarters to come.
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