The Impression
Christopher Heine for AdWeek:
Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s measurement lead, yesterday pointed to his firm’s partnership with measurement firm DataLogix to study 50 campaigns, finding that Facebook advertisers’ physical store sales were the result of a click only one percent of the time. Ninety-nine percent of sales were from consumers who saw an ad but didn’t click it. He repeatedly said Facebook ads work “just like in TV.”
There seems to be a push underway to move Internet advertising from the click back to the impression of old. Clearly, Facebook is trying to lead this push.
Personally, I like this. I never click on ads. Never have. Never will. The main problem for me is that it breaks the flow of whatever it is that I’m doing — usually reading. (The same isn’t true of Google ads on Search, obviously, where you are explicitly looking to click on something, which is why they work.)
But this doesn’t means ads can’t be effective on me. If I see something, I remember it, particularly if the ad is well done. More than television, to me, this is like the great print ads of old. (Television ads still break the flow — you could get away with it since for years there was no alternative. Now there are a lot of alternatives.)
