Facebook: Don’t Worry About Ad Clicks, Optimal Reach & Frequency Are Just As Important

By now we’ve all heard the doubts on

whether or not Facebook Ads work to drive meaningful business. Today Facebook will be unveiling data that counters the traditional ideology that clicks are king for brand advertisers. The new data shows that brand advertisers should focus on impressions, reach and frequency.

Facebook teamed up with Datalogix, a data mining firm, to crunch stats on ad effectiveness. The study concluded that less than 1 percent of in-store sales are tied to brand advertising campaigns where a user clicked on an ad. Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insights, stated that ads can see a 40 percent ROI lift by optimizing the reach and frequency of an ad – without focusing on clicks. Facebook will be able to leverage the relationship with Datalogix to offer brand marketers data on actual in-store sales that a specific ad campaign have generated.

While the data is geared towards those brand advertisers, clicks are still a major metric for those direct response advertisers.

A Facebook spokesperson gave us the following comment on the relationship with Datalogix:

“We are working with Datalogix to help advertisers understand how well their Facebook ads are working. We also do this through our partnerships with companies like Nielsen and comScore and through our own advertising tool. We know that people share a lot of information on Facebook, and we have taken great care to make sure that we measure the effectiveness of Facebook ads without compromising the commitments we have made on privacy. We don’t sell people’s personal information, and individual user data is not shared between Facebook, Datalogix or advertisers.”

More data and stats will be shared today at the IAB MIXX event in NYC.