A study which was recently completed by Mulley Communications found that Facebook users spend more time looking at advertisements on profile pages than on the homepage. More specifically, “71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page”. While the data wasn’t surprising, the study provided interesting insight into the behavior of students at the National College of Ireland.
Here were the main finding of the survey:
- 71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page (homepage).
Users pay more attention (53% vs. 31%) to page updates in their News Feed Wall rather than adverts to the right-hand side of the Wall. - 30 out of the 40 users log on to Facebook once a day or more.
- The average number of pages these users are fans of is 28 pages.
- Games were mentioned as a popular Facebook activity in pre-test questionnaire. When questioned directly if they play any games on Facebook, only 11 out of 40 indicated that they do, the most popular game is Farmville.
- Just over half of these users currently share videos via Facebook. Younger rather than older users are more likely to share videos. Posting a URL link to their own status update in Facebook or commenting on a friend’s status was their preferred way to share video.
If you want to view the full study, you can find it here.
Oddly enough this page is an example of a poor Facebook post. The first and most basic problem is that it’s written in press release format. What shows up on the post is the boring lead, making click-through less likely, and if one does it’s still something you need to read closely. Press releases are written for certain purposes and this is the appropriate style. But it’s fairly useless for other purposes.
The second comes from that, which is that it’s unclear what you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re trying to catch the attention of potential advertisers why in the world didn’t you include something like the following, much less put it as the lead? It comes from only a quick glance at the page for the survey:
“Quick takeaways from the survey:
* Advertising works in Facebook. And with the in-built demographic ad targeting, your ads will get clicked even more.
* Get yourself a Facebook Page if you are a business. A Facebook Page is free. Sending out updates to your customers via your Page gets noticed by your customers and you can build a fan base from there as your updates and offers will get looked at.”
If, instead, you’re trying to get opinions asking “Do you click on Facebook ads? Which ads do you like?” has resulted in exactly what someone actually using FB would expect. Thus far it’s one or two useful comments then people saying how much they hate them. This time the tangent is even worse: people are telling others how to block them. Several ideas of things that might work better have already come to mind without serious thought.
No, I’m not in advertising, communications, or anything related. The only degree I have is a bachelors in philosophy. I’m just someone interested in ways people work, read about it, and once in a rare while write about them.
Elspeth
(Null email address only because there’s nothing here saying if they’re kept private or not.)
Interestingly, if I understood Bulbstorm’s A/E correctly, the minimum ad buy for the homepage (aka news feed page) is $25k and the charge is based on CPM rather than CPC. Hence, the heavy presence of big spenders like Sony, Heineken, Old Spice, etc. Of course, with homepage placement you can run non-standard ads with video, polls, etc.
Either way, it’s no wonder Facebook is always tinkering with that right sidebar!
Great Info…thanx
I click on the ads no matter what I’m doing. I’ve found a lot of great games that way, and some really fascinating websites. What I COULD do without are the political ads! We’re bombarded with that crap day and night. I don’t need to see it on Facebook as well. This is a social site, not a political forum. Lets these morons argue and bicker on their own sites. We DON’T want it on FB. I mean, WTF is George W Bush doing on Facebook? It’s bad enough I had to look at his ugly face for eight years. He’s just using Facebook to further his own greedy agenda. He never did and never will care about anyone except his ultra rich cronies in big business!!!
Wow. 30 out of 40 users log into Facebook once or more each day. That’s almost like 3 out of 4 and nearly 75%. Amazing stats.
Love the eye-map. Those are always intriguing to study.
hmmm great study but I have one issue with it..facebook users are usually scrolling the page down to see what their friends been doing and in the video the home page is static…
hmm… a sample size of only 40 people is not exactly statistically relevant considering the user base Facebook has…
Cool findings, but a sample size of 40 seems a bit small.
Interesting data. Thanks for sharing.
I believe it is quite logical to see that your attention at the home page are mostly on the news feeds rather than the ads. However, your wall postings might not change that often and therefore you may notice the ads a little more.
Facebook could potentially offer advertisers different rates to advertise on different pages on the website.