Study: Facebook Exchange (FBX) News Feed Ads Rival Paid Search

Facebook began opening up news feed ad inventory to Facebook Exchange at the end of March and expanded the inventory offering to all its FBX partners in May. FBX news feed ads allow advertisers to retarget their site visitors with Facebook Link Page Post Ad formats.

Triggit, a Facebook Exchange (FBX) partner, released results today from two FBX news feed campaigns. The company says the results have been better than anticipated, surpassing right-rail FBX ads and Google AdX.

Triggit originally expected to see a 5X increase in click through rates for FBX ads in the news feed compared to the right-side inventory. The campaigns, for an international retailer and a large apparel site, yielded CTRs that were 16-24 times higher than right-side FBX ads. The company says that the FBX news feed click through rates now rival those they see from AdWords. CTRs in the international retailer’s campaigns were 38 times higher than Google AdX.

Acquisition costs were lower in both campaigns, as well. CPAs from FBX news feed ads for the large apparel site were one seventh of the cost of right-side FBX ads. The international retailer saw CPAs that were half the cost of right-side FBX ads.

The FBX news feed ads have outperformed Google AdX as well, with the international retailer campaign posting CPAs that were 1/10 of traditional Google AdX ads.

In these early months with low competition, CPCs are significantly lower for news feed FBX ads. The international retailer campaign’s CPCs were 66 percent lower than right-hand rail FBX ads and 1/16 the cost of Google AdX ads.