The average cost-per-click of a Facebook ad in the US was $0.33 in Q4 2012, finds Marin Software in a new report covering a representative sample of its enterprise-class clients. That’s up from an average of $0.28 in the company’s Q3 report, and $0.26 in the Q2 report (Facebook ad metrics were not tracked in the company’s Q1 release.) While Facebook ad costs increased in the second half of the year from Q2, the average click-through rate remained relatively steady, at 0.09% in Q2, 0.12% in Q3, and 0.09% in Q4.
The company also releases paid search metrics for the US, allowing for some comparisons between search advertising and Facebook ads. While Facebook ads had a far lower engagement rate in Q4 than paid search ads (0.09% vs. 2.11%), they did present a cheaper alternative, with their average CPC of $0.33 about one-third of the $1.01 average for paid search.
Comparing Facebook ad metrics across select regions, the Q4 report finds that click-through rates were slightly higher in the US than in the UK (0.07%), the Eurozone (0.08%), and Australia (0.07%). But, cost-per-click was highest in Australia ($0.66), far more expensive than the average click in the US, the UK ($0.39), and the Eurozone ($0.23).
About the Data: To uncover key trends for the fourth quarter of 2012, Marin Software sampled the Marin Global Online Advertising Index, which includes global advertisers and agencies that invest over $4.0 billion annually in biddable media through the Marin platform. The Marin Global Online Advertising Index consists of enterprise-class marketers””larger advertisers and agencies that spend in excess of $1 million annually on paid-search, display, social and mobile. As such, the data sample and findings skew towards the behavior of larger organizations and incudes some of the world’s most sophisticated advertisers.
The study is longitudinal, focusing on a representative set of advertisers who have been active on Marin for the previous five quarters and measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) on a year-over-year (YoY) and quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) basis. Unless otherwise mentioned, all of the analysis in the study refers to trends in the search (versus content) network. Wherever possible, Marin used medians and indexed values””instead of absolute values””to more clearly highlight overall trends. This allows Marin to mitigate the effects of outliers and make the findings more representative of the performance of the typical Marin client. For the Q4 2012 report, Marin refreshed its client index data pool. This could result in slight deviations from previously reported data but makes for more representative analysis and findings.