Facebook users are much more likely to engage with advertising content on the social networking site if they are fans of the brand doing the advertising, according to the first report to be born out of the Nielsen and Facebook collaboration announced last fall.
For the study, Nielsen has for six months now monitored the interaction of over 800,000 Facebook users with over 125 ad campaigns carried out by 70 brands. The group compared three distinct types of advertising:
A homepage ad, categorized as paid media, is just a typical ad with the option for a user to “Become a Fan.” An organic impression, or earned media, would be any social story that appeared in the user’s news feed because, for example, one of his or her friends became a fan of a brand. Finally, a social impression, essentially a hybrid of the two, was like a homepage ad that also displayed which friends were fans of the brand.
Nielsen concluded that ads with social connections were, probably to Facebook’s delight, definitely more effective than ordinary paid ads. Specifically, ad recall increased 6%, ad awareness increased 4%, purchase intent increased by 6%. Though just small growth margins, it could be just enough to convince brands how valuable it is to advertise on Facebook.
Both Nielsen and Facebook should be presenting the study’s data at Ad:Tech in San Francisco on Tuesday.