According to a study by Shareablee, branded-content ads far outperform standard ads in terms of paid impressions and earned impressions.
The 3-month study—involving 833 branded-content ads from 10 publisher pages and 265 standard ads from 47 brand pages—showed that the branded-content ads received 617,986 paid impressions and 1,248,448 earned impressions, while the standard ads received 375,489 paid impressions and 34,718 earned impressions.
The study indicates that branded content is seen as more share-worthy by average Facebook users. After all, what’s more fun to share: an Arby’s post referencing the latest bingeworthy Netflix show with some impressive curly-fry art…or a dull, basic digital coupon?
If you want your brand to catch extra attention with its Facebook ads, you may be better off paying influencers to produce branded-content posts through their page and then paying to promote those posts as ads, rather than promoting posts made by your brand’s own page.
On Facebook, people can increase an ad’s reach by sharing, liking or commenting on it, which can push the ad into their friends’ news feeds. As a result of this engagement, branded-content ads generate twice as many earned, or viral, impressions as paid impressions. And, standard Facebook ads attract less than one-tenth the number of earned impressions compared to paid impressions—meaning, you’re not getting much use out of those standard ads if you’re not promoting them and they’re not getting shares or comments.
The idea that Facebook users are more likely to engage with a piece of branded content than with a standard ad may not exactly be a newsflash, but the fact that advertisers are able to accrue so many extra and free impressions through branded-content ads makes it especially appealing to use influencer content as advertising.
So, should you give up your standard ad campaign and start working on getting branded-content ads out there? It really comes down to your objective.
For example, a standard ad promoting an amazing sale on a particular product you have is likely to get your store more conversions than paying Buzzfeed to write a listicle about you. However, if your brand is seeking to maximize awareness without blowing through your advertising budget, a branded-content campaign may be the way to go.
Need help with your Facebook advertising strategy? Contact Kirkpatrick Creative today.