Are Social Media Ads Effective? By As-sayyidul Arafat
AREWA AGENDA – An average internet user spends 144 minutes on social media, this up by two minutes from 142 minuttes in the previous year, ads on social media clearly play an important role in introducing consumers to new brands and products. Despite a stable ad-blocking trend, 45% of internet users today say they’re likely to buy brands they see advertised.
If you’re still relying exclusively on traditional advertising to market your company’s products and services, you’re missing out a lot. Social media ads presents a huge opportunity to reach more consumers at a lower cost. Not only will you reach more consumers, you are able to target the right ones.
According to Global web index the share of people who use social media primarily to research and find products to buy has increased by seven percentage points in the past three years to 31% today. It’s increasingly becoming the space where people want to see brands, offers and products in their news feeds. Out of 10 brands, social media users tend to follow 4 of their favorite brands on their social media platforms. Been able to access social media on mobile phone is an advantage for advertisers, because it is what shields it from web-based ad-blockers.
Globally, ads placed on social media, ranks as the fourth most popular source of brand discovery, with 28% of internet users saying ads help them find out about new products.
Facebook is where 4 in 10 go more than once a day, and they’re 83% more likely than the average Facebooker to have posted a comment about a product or brand (34% have done so in the past month).
With Facebook recently announcing its new crypto currency Libra, users will soon be able to not only click on ads, but also make instant purchases in response to them.
As the distinction between entertainment and social networking becomes more blurred, brands are being presented with opportunities to engage consumers in unique experiences.
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Social media ad clickers are an audience with a strong above-average likelihood of engaging with different types of experiential tools.
Engagement with experiential tools
Ad clickers more than twice as likely to have used an augmented reality (AR) app in the past month, as AR technology becomes a driving force of the digital advertising market more broadly.
AR advertising is expected to reach $2.6 billion in 2022, and all of the major players are influencing its growth.
For example, Snapchat is ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation in the realms of AR features and lenses.
Its Ad Kit will not only provide huge opportunities for engagement and entertainment via AR ads, but will also offer the infrastructure for expanded reach through integration with over 200 apps.
But social media ad clickers won’t just click on any ad they see, regardless of how entertaining and engaging it is, ad clickers want brands to provide them with personalized recommendations for purchases.
Advertising that will engage them has to be relevant to their interests, and personalization is key here.
Personalized marketing is not a new phenomenon, but with the power of rich media content and revolutionary machine learning tools, brands are now able to deliver dynamic and tailored shopping experiences to drive engagement and customer loyalty
So the answer to the Question is Yes Social media ads is effective. Adobe Digital Insights’ 2018 State of Digital Advertising Report shows that social media ads drove three times more non-customers than existing customers to retailer websites as of the end of 2017. In short, people are looking at social ads and they’re clicking on those ads more than ever before.
As-sayyidul Arafat is Social Media Analyst and can be contacted on Instagram and Twitter @ “As-sayyidul Arafat” and also check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel
Arewa Agenda is a Publication of young writers from Northern Nigeria towards peaceful coexistence and national development through positive narratives.
