Research – The value of Facebook Fan

Facebook and Nielsen published a joint report, called “Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression”.

The report examines the extent to which three kinds of “advertising” impressions drive reach and brand impact: standard paid impressions, “Homepage Ad,” paid impressions that contain social information “featured social context,” and “earned” impressions that happen as a result of a Facebook Fans user engaging with an ad “Organic Ads.”

If you don’t know the difference between these three: the image below shows examples.

Nielsen compared the three types of ads on branding-related benchmarks; ad recall, awareness, and purchase intent. (see below).

These are pretty dramatic results. As the report states, “Study after study has shown that consumers trust their friends and peers more than anyone else when it comes to making a purchase decision.” This would seem to indicate that the value of Facebook fan becomes quantifiable when paired with an advertising campaign – and can lift results anywhere between 100% – 400%.

Very powerful stuff.

The full report is available for download from Nielsen (for free) here.

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Tagged as: Advertising, Facebook, Nielsen Company