Friends Help Boost Ads on Facebook
For companies looking to advertise on social-networking sites, it pays to make friends.
Ads that can incorporate people’s friends as “fans” on Facebook make a much bigger impression on viewers than plain ads on the site, according to a report from Nielsen and Facebook released Tuesday. The study found that ads that involved people’s friends increased users’ ability to recall the advertiser by 16 percent, compared with regular ads, which boosted recall by 10 percent. And intent to purchase a product increased by eight percent after viewers saw ads that involved their friends, versus just two percent after they saw plain advertisements.
“While you can buy a homepage ad, you can’t buy the influence that’s inherent when a consumer sees a list of their own friends featured on a social ad,” wrote Nielsen’s Vice President of Media Analytics Jon Gibs and Sean Bruich of Facebook’s measurement research in the report.
