UK Facebook ads rocket 33% in a year

The number of ads on Facebook has rocketed by a third in the last year as marketers increasingly look to harness the world's largest social networking site.

According to ComScore data, Facebook served 19.7bn ads in the UK during May 2010, up from 11.8bn a year before.

Traditional brand advertising is driving growth, led by the likes of Virgin Group, Telefonica Europe and Quick Credit Score.

The figures cement Facebook’s position as the biggest online advertising platform in the country, serving almost four times more ads than second-placed Microsoft Sites (4.7bn).

Google Sites, eBay and Yahoo Sites complete the top five, with 2.68bn, 2.71bn and 2.4bn ads in the month respectively.

The findings come as the world’s largest advertisers, including Procter & Gamble and Unilever, commit to increasing digital spend in general and on social media in particular.

Unilever’s global chief marketing officer Keith Weed plans to double digital spend over the next year and admitted last month to having recently held talks with Facebook and discovered "a mutual agenda".

Mike Read, managing director of ComScore Europe, said: "Facebook's popularity continues to surge not only with consumers but also with advertisers. With eight billion more ads on the site versus last year, there is a clear willingness to test Facebook's ability to drive brand engagement."

The remaining publishers to make the UK’s Top 10 sites in terms of volume of ads served are Yahoo Sites, AOL, Trader Media Group, Glam Media and Amazon.

However, Mark Redgrave, chief executive of semantic web service OpenAmplify, cautioned that the publishers displaying the most ads are not the most profitable.

"The last year has been the first year advertising has really taken off on Facebook and I think advertising will increase by more than a third again in the next year," he said. "But the key to the current growth is that it can only be measured in terms of volume, not value.

"Being there’s the easy bit, CPM rates are generally cheap, the hard bit comes when marketers try and fully engage. The technology now exists to really understand users based on conversations."

Top UK Ad Publishers, May 2010

Source: ComScore

Top UK Ad Publishers, May 2010

Source: ComScore

This article was first published on mediaweek.co.uk

Source: brandrepublic.com
Author:Arif Durrani
Date: 19/07/2010