Facebook ad pricing up yet spending is down – digital ad trends

Facebook advertising cost-per-click (CPC) rose 22% in the second quarter of 2011, as more advertisers have come online as was always Facebook’s plan for financial growth. The earliest adopters saw the lowest price when there were the fewest members and as the number of reachable members rises, so will the price.
Efficient Frontier’s 2011 Global Digital Marketing Performance Report says that Facebook CPCs are expected to reach 80% growth by the end of 2011.
Efficient Frontier notes that brands actively seeking fans on Facebook are “on course to double their fan base Year on Year (YOY) by October, demonstrating an increasingly competitive marketplace for consumers’ attention.”
That said, the dollars spent were up 8% in the second quarter but dropped 17% from the first quarter of 2010 with Efficient Frontier suspecting advertisers are focusing on their return on investment (ROI) over volume. We suspect an alternative reason could be that advertisers are diversifying their digital ad spends to include niche target sites rather than the standard Twitter/Facebook duo.
According to Efficient Frontier, comments on Facebook have a viral effect. “An analysis of 10 million fans managed by Context Optional demonstrated that for every brand post, there was an average of 100 comments in response. However, brands with more fans received additional interactions. For every 17,000 additional fans generated, the brand received one more comment per post. This demonstrated that there is a viral effect to having more fans as this creates more direct responses (from existing fans) and also indirect responses (from friends of fans).”
The study found that Facebook spends are mostly incremental. “Facebook constitutes approximately 5% of search budgets, though for some advertisers this can peak at 25% during time-sensitive, offer-led promotions.In the entertainment category there are some large advertisers who solely advertise on Facebook. This hints that there are new advertising budgets from the gaming and dating sectors going to Facebook, which would not have gone into Search otherwise.”
Lastly, the study revealed that Bing/Yahoo! gained a stunning 3.4% points of spend share from Google since Q4 2010. “Bing’s continued focus on higher quality and higher monetized traffic is paying off. Last quarter it was noted that the ROI on Bing/Yahoo! was better than Google. Bid management technology such as that used by Efficient Frontier has enabled advertisers to take advantage of that by moving budgets as appropriate.”

This article published on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 12:03 am | Contact the editor Tags: facebook, facebook marketing, featured, real estate social mediaCategory: New Media
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NAR and NAHB spending on Capitol Hill compared to Google and Facebook

Over the years, Google has gained substantial attention because of their close ties with the American government and Facebook has gotten quite cozy with the current administration, even playing host to a town hall meeting with President Obama earlier this year.

Now, the two companies are making headlines for their increased spending on lobbying. In the second quarter of 2011, for the first time, Google’s spending on lobbying was higher than Microsoft’s, and the two companies have just broken their own quarterly lobbying spend records.

Google’s lobbying spend for Q2 2011 was $2.06 million, up 54% over the past year, while Facebook’s lobbying spend was $320,000, nearly matching their entire lobbying effort for 2010.

When we heard these numbers and read opinion columns opining about the large amounts of money the two companies are spending and the feigned outrage is interesting to us.

Our immediate thought was “why the outrage over two million dollars, haven’t these people ever heard of real estate lobbying?” We analyzed real estate spending back in 2010 and many people were shocked at how many industry dollars go toward Capitol Hill.

Take a look at this comparison chart to see if you believe Google and Facebook’s spending is outrageous, and take special note that for the recent year, not all numbers have been reported which is why we included 2009-2010 to give you an idea of an annual spend. We separated out contributions from lobbyist spending, because many Realtors think that all political spends coming from their trade association are for political offices, but the spend by NAR on lobbyists is one of the largest in the entire nation (take special note of the second line of this chart).

Not only are political contributions and spending on lobbyists dramatically higher in the real estate industry compared to technology as demonstrated above, contributions are spread more evenly between state and federal contributions in real estate. Support for Democrats and Republicans varies widely, even within leaders in each sector and NAR appears to be the most fair, indicating that it is often an office that is supported rather than the idea of an individual.

What do you think of the political contributions and money spent on lobbyists in each sector and even within the real estate industry? Tell us in comments your thoughts.

This article published on Friday, July 22nd, 2011 at 2:32 am | Contact the editor Tags: featured, real estate lobbying, Real Estate News, Technology

Category: News

AgentGenius Editor-in-Chief: Lani, named one of Real Estate’s 100 Most Influencial, as well as 12 Most Influencial Women in Real Estate, is a business writer hailing from the great state of Texas in the city of Austin. As a digital native, Lani is immersed not only in advanced technologies and new media, but is also a stats nerd often burried in piles of reports. Lani is a proven leader, thoughtful speaker, and vested partner at AGBeat. You’ll often find her on Facebook and Twitter, so feel free to reach out and get to know her.

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