FaceBook Ad Marketing – An In-Depth Look at CTR

In the last post on Facebook Advertising Marketing – The “Core”, we talked in detail about the “core” metrics. In this post, we dig a little deeper into one of them, CTR – Facebook ad click-through rate.

1.Factors influencing CTR

The ultimate goal of our advertising and marketing is to have our “Niche Audience” niche audience click, go to a page, add a cart, buy, etc. when they see our ads.
The CTR related factors, clicks and impressions, are at the very beginning of reaching the audience. So what factors are clicks and impressions actually related to?

Take a more easy to understand example, offline shopping mall shopping, under what circumstances consumers will enter the shop?
First of all, consumers have the demand, in the shop has not yet entered the shop, you can through the shop sign know what the shop sells, in addition to the shop decoration is very good / appropriate, so that consumers think they enter the shop is to buy what he wants, then the probability of this consumer into the shop will increase.

Audience Precision: In advertising, audience precision has a direct impact on CTR, and with Facebook’s detailed targeting options, it is possible to target based on geographic location, demographics, interests and behaviours, etc. This ensures that ads are shown to the most likely users, which can significantly increase CTR. With Facebook’s detailed targeting option, ads can be precisely targeted based on geographic location, demographics, interests and behaviours, ensuring that ads are shown to the most likely users and increasing CTR. e.g., ads for maternity and baby products can be targeted to parents of newborn babies, which can significantly increase click-through rates.
Audience width: For low unit cost consumer products, a wide audience reach can help increase CTR, however, the wider the general audience for high unit cost products (e.g. luxury cars, luxury goods, etc.), the lower the CTR and the more precise targeting is needed. facebook’s Lookalike Audiences tool helps to find new potential customers who are similar to your existing customers, improving ad performance. Improve the effectiveness of ads.

Headlines and material: in advertising and marketing, catchy headlines and visual material are key to increasing CTR. The use of high-quality images and videos can immediately capture the user’s attention. For example, use Dynamic Creative, which automatically generates and tests different combinations of adverts to find the most effective material.

Creative: Good creative needs to resonate with the target audience. Through A/B testing, we continuously optimise the copy and design to find the creative format that best arouses users’ interest. For example, combining user-generated content (UGC) or celebrity endorsement can enhance the credibility and appeal of the advert.

Time of day: the effectiveness of adverts placed at different times of day can vary significantly. For example, CTRs for entertainment and social ads are typically higher during evening social events, while CTRs for career advancement and education ads may be higher during work hours.
Specific promotional nodes: Click-through rates for ads are often significantly higher during specific promotional nodes (e.g., Black Friday, Christmas), and Facebook offers event and campaign tools to help advertisers warm up and promote their ads in advance of these nodes to boost ad effectiveness.

By combining the above factors, advertisers can more effectively increase the CTR of Facebook ads.Facebook very much encourages high CTR ads, quality ads are not only conducive to increasing the platform’s advertising revenue, but also enhance the intelligence of its own advertising system, and most importantly, improve the user experience, which is much more favourable to the development of the platform itself. Therefore, if our ads have higher CTR, the bidding price may be relatively low, because the platform hopes to improve user experience and advertising effect through high click rate ads.

2.Changes in CTR and Ad Targeting

CTR is variable, not fixed

In Facebook advertising, CTR (click-through rate) is not a fixed value. Even when using the same ad material and targeting, CTR can change over time. Usually, CTR goes through a trend of low, then high and then gradually lower. This process can be divided into several stages:

Initial stage (low first): When the ads are just placed, Facebook’s algorithm performs modelling and learning to understand how the audience reacts to the ads.

Rising phase (later high): As the algorithm is optimised, the ads will gradually reach a more precise audience and the CTR will rise.

Decline phase (gradually lower): When the ads start to be exposed on a large scale and users see the same ads more often, the CTR will gradually decline, which is called “material decline”.

Main reasons for the decline phase

Audience Repeat Reach: In advertising and marketing, users may see the same advertisement multiple times. Although the platform will have a frequency control strategy to avoid a poor user experience (e.g., limiting the frequency of the same user seeing the same ad), as the repeat coverage increases, interested users have already clicked on the ads, and uninterested users will be even less likely to click on them, leading to a decline in CTR.

Traffic Pool Expansion: when ads start to take off at scale, Facebook’s algorithm will show them to a wider audience. These additional audiences may be less relevant to the advert, leading to a drop in click-through rate.

Ad Targeting

In Facebook advertising, different ad objectives affect the click-through rate and effectiveness of an advert. Example.

Brand Awareness: Brand Awareness ads are usually not measured primarily by CTR, but are more focused on Impressions. These ads may have a lower CTR, but they help increase the overall exposure of the brand.

Engagement Campaigns: Degree ads may direct users to click on ads in order to interact and increase user engagement with a post or page, such as liking, commenting, sharing, etc. CTRs are higher, but other forms of interaction such as commenting and sharing should also be considered.

Conversion Campaigns: Conversion ads are designed with a clear goal, usually with a strong call to action (CTA), to complete a specific conversion behaviour (e.g. purchase, registration). In order to achieve the conversion goal, Facebook will expand the scope of the audience, the CTR is affected by the price of the customer unit, compared with the focus on the final conversion rate (Conversion Rate).

Reach: The goal of reach advertising is to maximise the display of ads, the broadest placement strategy, ads may be displayed to a very wide audience, less concerned about click-through behaviour, including those with low relevance to the content of the ad. This strategy has the lowest click-through rate, and reaching a larger audience increases the absolute number of potential clicks for maximum exposure.

Different advertising objectives will affect the design of creative, copywriting, audience targeting, etc., which will directly affect the CTR.Optimising the strategy according to the advertising objectives can achieve better advertising results and higher CTR.

At the same time, a high CTR does not mean a high exposure, and vice versa. the relationship between CTR and ad volume is sometimes inversely proportional, because the higher the exposure, the wider the audience reached, and the wider the audience group may be less relevant to the advert.