Amazing new statistics over the dominance of Facebook; Techcrunch reports that Facebook now has nearly 180 million active users, 70% of which log on daily while Vator.tv reports that Facebook now accounts for 11.1 percent of time spent online in the U.S, clearly overtaking Yahoo and Google.
Facebook it seems really is becoming a social layer on top of the internet and through Facebook connect it’s weaving its roots even deeper into the web.
What is also interesting however is that ads on Facebook are way underperforming the rest of the web according to a recent Mashable report, ads on Facebook show half the click-through rates compared to banner ads on standard websites, so while the average on websites is 0.1%, the average on Facebook is 0.051 %. It’s a pretty huge difference and can probably be attributed to both low quality advertisers on FB as well as the fact that people aren’t inherently in transaction mode when they visit a social network. Clearly Facebook is in need of a new approach to advertising in order to increase these click-through rates but the fact that they have almost infinite inventory makes this a very difficult task.
What’s your opinion on Facebook ads ?