Social Context Ads at Facebook

Advertisers promoting their services, wares and brands on Facebook will be pleased to hear that the social advertising system has finally been updated to provide metrics on social endorsements in ads - referred to by Facebook as "social context".

Social context are the footnote-like endorsements listed beneath ads which say “Friend A, Friend B and 2 other friends like [Facebook Page, group, event or application].” Advertisers can now access social-context metrics in their Ad Manager’s Reports section, seeing the number of impressions, clicks and click through rate of ads within a specific social context, as well as what percentage of an advertisements' total impressions included social context.

The new metrics could further confirm a Nielsen study which showed that these recommendations improve ad recall by 10%, awareness by 4%, and purchase intent by 2% over the same ad without social context. Advertisers may want to consider expanding their use of social context ads by increasing targeting of users who have friends who Like the ad’s destination.

Website Magazine is a relatively aggressive advertiser on Facebook and we are seeing a relatively low impression percentage now. We'll let you know if that changes in the future.