Study shows big gains in advertising effectiveness with social media component
Published April 23, 2010
The expert use of social media marketing can drastically increase the recall rate, purchase intent, and general awareness of digital marketing, according to the results of a recent study conducted by Nielsen and Facebook.
The study's authors, Nielsen's Jon Gibs and Facebook's Sean Bruich, said that "while exposure to the homepage ad itself increased ad recall, those users exposed to both the 'paid ad' and the organic impression remembered the ad at three times the rate of those just exposed to the paid homepage ad. We saw a similar effect for the other two metrics evaluated."
Purchase intent, in particular, benefited from the addition of social context. Four times as many respondents who saw ads with social context were likely to report purchase intent than those who saw Facebook ads without it.
The Nielsen/Facebook study is one of many recent surveys that have found significant evidence showing that online consumers are more likely to trust social media friends and peers than digital direct marketing when it comes to forming impressions of brands and the intent to purchase products.