Dive Brief:
- Facebook’s Audience Network cost advertisers 9% less per thousand impressions than targeting consumers on the social network’s news feed, says a new benchmark report from Salesforce.
- The mobile ad network offered a CPM of $8.17 for mobile app installation ads and Facebook’s CPM was $8.99, Salesforce says, but consumers were slightly less likely to click through.
- Cost per app install was $3.37 on the Audience Network, 17.4% more than the Facebook news feed’s $2.87.
Dive Insight:
Just nine months old, Facebook’s mobile ad network is performing well for the social media giant and its advertisers, targeting ads to consumers via partner sites such as the Huffington Post and Shazam. According to Salesforce’s “Social.com Q1 2015 Advertising Benchmark” report, ad impressions and app install ads cost marketers less in the first quarter than advertising on Facebook’s news feed alone.
Conversions continue to be somewhat less costly on the Facebook feed, however, with click-throughs and downloads on the Audience Network costing somewhat more ($0.96/$3.37), on average, than the news feed only ($0.85/$2.87). But the Audience Network has caught up fast by helping campaigns expand upon their reach powered by Facebook's vast amounts of consumer information.
Overall cost per click throughout e-commerce fell from 59 cents in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 31 cents in Q1 2015, with click-through rates nearly doubling from 0.87% to 1.65%.
