Home Data Nugget As Facebook Evolves Ad Offerings, CPCs And CPMs Drop
Data Nugget

As Facebook Evolves Ad Offerings, CPCs And CPMs Drop

By Kimberly Maul

SHARE:

FB Ads ReportAs Facebook continues to expand and adapt its advertising offerings, metrics including CPMs, CTRs and CPCs showed inconsistencies in Q1 2013 which are expected to level out as advertising normalizes on the social networking site.

Facebook strategic PMD Spruce Media highlighted these changes in its “State of Facebook Advertising Q1 2013,” released this week, leading up to Facebook’s Q1 earnings call set for May 1.

CPMs for all Facebook advertisements rose slightly by 3%, from $0.38 in Q4 2012 to $0.39 in Q1 2013. CPMs for desktop ads, or those ads on the right-hand side of the Facebook page, decreased by 24%; CPMs of desktop-only News Feed ads dropped by 18%, and those for mobile-only News Feed ads dropped by 31%.

Spruce CPM

While part of the decline may be due to the holiday season boosting ad prices in the latter part of 2012, Spruce also mentioned that in Q1, Facebook pushed more ads into the news feed, increasing inventory and causing the drop in prices for those ads. The increase in demand for the Facebook Exchange from advertisers kept up interest in the ads on the right-hand side of the page.

Spruce showed that CTRs for Facebook in Q1 2013 were inconsistent as advertisers started to optimize their ad buys and shift spending to the more effective News Feed ads, especially on mobile. Mobile-only News Feed ads saw a CTR of 1.86% in Q1, up 7 percentage points from 1.74% in Q4 2012, and all Facebook ads saw an average CTR of 0.1%, up from 0.07% in Q4. Desktop-only News Feed ads saw a lower CTR of 1.08%, down 14 percentage points from 1.25% in Q4, while desktop ads saw CTRs drop from 0.04% to 0.03%.

Spruce CTR

CPCs for Facebook ads declined mostly, with the Q4 2012 CPC for all Facebook ads at $0.55, dropping 31% to $0.38 in the first quarter 2013. Desktop-only News Feed ads dropped from $0.43 to $0.41, while mobile dropped to $0.19, down from $0.30 in Q4 2012. CPCs for general desktop ads rose to $0.87 from $0.75. 

Spruce CPC

Facebook continues to evolve its advertising offerings, most recently introducing cost-per-action (CPA) bidding, in April 2013.

Must Read

CTV

Paramount Skydance Merged Its Business – Now It’s Ready To Merge Its Tech Stack

Paramount Skydance, which officially turns 100 days old this week, released its first post-merger quarterly earnings report on Monday.

The Arena Group's Stephanie Mazzamaro (left) chats with ad tech consultant Addy Atienza at AdMonsters' Sell Side Summit Austin.
Publishers

For Publishers, AI Gives Monetizable Data Insight But Takes Away Traffic

Traffic-starved publishers are hopeful that their long-undervalued audience data will fuel advertising’s automated future – if only they can finally wrest control of the industry narrative away from ad tech middlemen.

Platforms

Q3: The Trade Desk Delivers On Financials, But Is Its Vision Fact Or Fantasy?

The Trade Desk posted solid Q3 results on Thursday, with $739 million in revenue, up 18% year over year. But the main narrative for TTD this year is less about the numbers and more about optics and competitive dynamics.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters
Comic: He Sees You When You're Streaming
CTV

IP Address Match Rates Are a Joke – And It’s No Laughing Matter

According to a new report, IP-to-email matches are accurate just 16% of the time on average, while IP-to-postal matches are accurate only 13% of the time. (Oof.)

Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)
antitrust

The DOJ And Google Sharpen Their Remedy Proposals As The Two Sides Prepare For Closing Arguments

The phrase “caution is key” has become a totem of the new age in US antitrust regulation. It was cited this week by both the DOJ and Google in support of opposing views on a possible divestiture of Google’s sell-side ad exchange.

create a network of points with nodes and connections, plain white background; use variations of green and grey for the dots and the connctions; 85% empty space
ad tech acquisition

Alt Identity Provider ID5 Buys TrueData, Marking Its First-Ever Acquisition

ID5 bought TrueData mainly to tackle what ID5 CEO Mathieu Roche calls the “massive fragmentation” of digital identity, which is a problem on the user side and the provider side.

Popular

  1. Platforms

    Q3: The Trade Desk Delivers On Financials, But Is Its Vision Fact Or Fantasy?

    The Trade Desk posted solid Q3 results on Thursday, with $739 million in revenue, up 18% year over year. But the main narrative for TTD this year is less about the numbers and more about optics and competitive dynamics.

  2. Comic: He Sees You When You're Streaming
    CTV

    IP Address Match Rates Are a Joke – And It’s No Laughing Matter

    According to a new report, IP-to-email matches are accurate just 16% of the time on average, while IP-to-postal matches are accurate only 13% of the time. (Oof.)

  3. The Arena Group's Stephanie Mazzamaro (left) chats with ad tech consultant Addy Atienza at AdMonsters' Sell Side Summit Austin.
    Publishers

    For Publishers, AI Gives Monetizable Data Insight But Takes Away Traffic

    Traffic-starved publishers are hopeful that their long-undervalued audience data will fuel advertising’s automated future – if only they can finally wrest control of the industry narrative away from ad tech middlemen.

  4. Comic: "Deal ID, please."
    Data

    The Trade Desk And PubMatic Are Done Pretending Deal IDs Work

    The Trade Desk and PubMatic announced a new API-based integration for managing deal ID campaigns built atop TTD’s Price Discovery and Provisioning (PDP) API, which was announced earlier this year.

  5. Nicole Scaglione, Global VP of CTV/OTT & Online Video, PubMatic
    OPINION: Data-Driven Thinking

    Why Meta’s Exit From MRC Audits Should Be A Wake-Up Call For Marketers

    Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.