{"id":32459,"date":"2014-07-17T07:53:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T07:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=32459"},"modified":"2014-07-17T07:53:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T07:53:34","slug":"paid-social-ads-work-despite-consumer-perceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/07\/paid-social-ads-work-despite-consumer-perceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Paid social ads work despite consumer perceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"
A new study, the\u00a0State of the American Consumer report<\/a>, shows that the public doesn\u2019t think\u00a0social media advertising<\/a>\u00a0on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are making an impact.<\/p>\n The survey by Gallup, released earlier this week, indicated a mere 5 percent of U.S. consumers believe that ads have a big impact on their purchases.<\/p>\n It also showed that 62 percent of Americans, and 48 percent of millennials, claim they\u2019re not swayed at all by social media ads.<\/p>\n Are Brands Wasting Money?<\/b><\/p>\n By 2017, brands are expected to spend\u00a0$11 billion on social media\u00a0<\/a>ads across multiple platforms. More than\u00a092 percent<\/a>\u00a0of businesses use Facebook advertising and more than 23 percent advertise on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.<\/p>\n With brands investing so heavily in social advertising, it\u2019s important to consider the true effectiveness of such strategies. Marketers should be reassured that the Gallup examined only how consumers self identified, not how those individuals acted.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHow individuals report on their actions and how they may be influenced or behave online can be very different,\u201d\u00a0explains ZOG Digital\u2019s Kim Giroux<\/a>. \u201cAd lift testing, for example, is an important method for marketers looking to measure the effectiveness of their strategies, as it indicates actions for users that have had no interaction or have not seen an ad versus users that have been shown advertisements.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Proof is in the Results<\/b><\/p>\n If Gallup were to look at customer behavior or compare the actions of users shown an ad versus those that were not, the survey results would look much different.<\/p>\n Attribution modeling and metrics that indicate advertising effectiveness are much more complex and accurate than self-identification. In fact, advertising on social media has been proven to be effective.<\/p>\n Ninety-seven percent of marketers<\/a>\u00a0believe that social media marketing helps their businesses, with 58 percent saying it positively affects sales and 88 percent saying it improves brand awareness.<\/p>\n One great example on Twitter comes from the\u00a0dating service HowAboutWe<\/a>. The company used paid advertising on Twitter to promote coupons in five markets around the United States.<\/p>\n The company found that leads coming from the Twitter promotion were 20 percent more likely to convert into paying subscribers than leads from any other avenue, including the company\u2019s website and emails.<\/p>\n Evidence that paid advertising on Facebook works can be found in several studies as well. For example,\u00a0comScore<\/a>looked at how much money fans of several brands spent compared to non-fans.<\/p>\n