Facebook launches new global advertising metrics

The social networking site has created a column called "Social %" in its Ads Manager section, which shows the percentage of advertising impressions that were delivered with social endorsements.

Social context shows people who have liked or engaged with the Facebook Page, event or application.

Facebook likens such online social endorsements to word-of-mouth recommendations from friends offline, with the result of making ads more relevant to the people who see them.  

In a statement today, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook claimed the new suite of metrics will provide advertisers "with the data you need to make more informed decisions about connecting with your customers and advocates".

Ads promoting pages, events, or applications are automatically eligible to be delivered with this advocacy information or social endorsements.

A social endorsement is defined as "a sentence in an ad that includes information about the viewer’s friend(s) who have already engaged with the advertised Facebook Page, event, application, or directly with ad".

In addition, four new columns will appear within the ‘Advertising Performance Report’ available in Ads Manager: Social impressions: ad impressions that include social endorsements, (2) social clicks: clicks on ads that originated from an ad with social endorsements (e.g. a social impression), (3) social  per cent: percentage of total ad impressions with social endorsements, and (4) social CTR: social clicks divided by social impressions.

Facebook draws on research from Nielsen which found that people are 68 per cent more likely to remember the ad and twice as likely to remember what the ad said when they see a friend has interacted with the ad on Facebook.