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You are here: Home / Blog / Business Intelligence / New Poll Shows Facebook Users (Mostly) Aren’t Looking At Ads

New Poll Shows Facebook Users (Mostly) Aren’t Looking At Ads

Posted by on June 6, 2012 · 4 Comments 

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Facebook users aren't looking at adsDetermining the true efficacy of advertising can be a challenge, and Facebook advertising is no exception. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll may shed some light on how Facebook users make purchasing decisions based on what they see on the site. For example? Four out of five Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the site.

After scanning through the results, here’s the bottom line: Facebook users mostly aren’t looking at ads—at least according to this poll. They’re not there to buy or be sold to; they’re on Facebook to interact, and to us, that’s not surprising. One thing we would like to know, however, is the sample size of the group that produced these poll results—that sort of information is always important, especially if you want to make a correlation between the activities of a select group and that of a larger, more global population.

We’re genuinely interested in seeing how Facebook continues to morph the experience for its mobile user base, which continues to grow. Ads aren’t visible (today) on the mobile interface (which we like), and as more people access Facebook from mobile, that likely impacts their potential revenue. This? It’ll change.

A word of caution: this post doesn’t suggest that Facebook advertising isn’t something to consider. Rather, the results from this poll show that Facebook advertising isn’t always effective, so being aware of that fact before you launch a Facebook advertising campaign is important. As is working with the right people and/or products to make sure your Facebook advertising campaign is created and managed to deliver maximum opportunities for success. And just because you can DIY, that doesn’t mean that you should.

Facebook advertising can be effective. But it probably shouldn’t be the only kind of online advertising you experiment with.

Has your brand or business found success with Facebook advertising? We’d love to hear your experiences.

Image by Feral78 via Creative Commons

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Filed under Business Intelligence, Digital Marketing, Featured Articles, Social Media Marketing, Technology news · Tagged with , , , , ,

  • http://twitter.com/ShadTranslation Troikaa Translation

    I have been using facebook for years now.. but never click on any ads till now..

  • http://shinytoyrobots.com/ Robin Cannon

    “After scanning through the results, here’s the bottom line: Facebook users mostly aren’t looking at ads—at least according to this poll.”

    …I suppose my query would be, isn’t this true for most websites? I don’t know if the “4 out of 5 users have never bought a product as a result of a Facebook ad” is a high or low ratio in comparison to other websites.

    Facebook’s need to maximize its advertising has been focused on since the problematic IPO (particularly in regards to their mobile revenue). But I think this kind of statistic needs some kind of baseline comparison before we can judge it in positive/negative terms.

  • http://socialfreshacademy.com/ Jason Keath

    You cannot ask people what they see online or what influences them to buy something. They A) cannot honestly answer the question and B) have a bias to want to be “above the influence” of advertising and marketing.

    The truth is people do not know when ads work. But data does. Any “report” or “study” that just asks people what they think about their buying decisions is not very helpful and rarely accurate. 

    This was bad reporting from Reuters. 

  • Alan Edgett

    4 out of 5 Dentists also recommend Dentyne. What’s the point of this article. Consumers never individually think they click/get influenced by ads. Fortunately their group totals tell a different story. Facebook isn’t as cheap as it used to be, but the ads still work–especially for internal apps.

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