STUDY: Women Click More Facebook Ads Than Men

Gender and age directly relate to how often a Facebook user clicks on an advertisement.

This finding comes from a study by Facebook marketing agency Social Code. Researchers  tracked click-through rates and like rates for Facebook ads that contained a like button, then correlated data directly with the genders and ages of the Facebook users who saw the ads.

In all, Social Code spent 10 months analyzing four million pieces of data supplied by over 50 million client companies in a variety of industries.

Social Code found that:

• Facebook users over the age of 50 are 28.2 percent more likely to click an advertisement than 18 to 29 year-old users.
• Women age 50 and older are even more likely to click advertisements, at a rate of 31.2 percent higher than young adults.
• The gap between the rate at which men age 50 or older click advertisements is much narrower than women, representing only a 16 percent difference from their younger counterparts.
• Older Facebook users are nine percent less likely to click the like button on an advertisement.
• Overall, men are 2.2 percent more likely to click like than women.
• Men over 50 years old have an 11 percent lower like rate than younger males, and a nine percent lower like rate than people from all age groups.

Social Code’s Chief Executive Officer, Lauren O’Shaughnessy, believes this is because “younger Facebook users are more comfortable using the like button than older users at this point.”

She points out that “while older users are adopting Facebook at a high rate, they are also the newest subset to join the social network, meaning they may not have high friend numbers, so ads are less likely to have social context.”

The social context used in Facebook advertisements, where ads show how many of a user’s friends like a brand, have proven quite effective overall. Facebook’s users trust their friends’ opinions about products, so they are naturally more apt to like a brand their friends like.

When it comes to clicking the like button, men are 2.2 percent more likely to do so than women. While this is not a great percentage difference, it does beg the question: Are men more influenced by their friends’ opinions than women?

Social Code admits that ad performance varies a great deal, depending on numerous variables.  Even so, the information contained in this study can be used by advertisers to hone in on their target audiences, especially if older women are their target audience.

Readers, are you more likely to click like if your friends already like a brand? And how often do you click Facebook ads?

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Fueled by smartphones, daily deals, merchants embrace mobile marketing in a …

Retailers can no longer rely on the flashing neon sign or the “clown on the corner” to draw in customers who are walking past the storefronts with their heads down looking at their mobile devices.

That’s the message from Borrell Associates, which says it is seeing a dramatic shift in how small and mid-size businesses are embracing mobile advertising and mobile promotions.

Mobile advertising is fast becoming the go-to choice for local businesses across the U.S., thanks to the fast spreading of social media, smartphones and daily deals and coupons, according to a new report (subscription required) by Borrell Associates.

Local businesses in the U.S. are on pace to spend almost $800 million in 2011 on mobile ads, according to the Borrell report. Half of the spending — $400 million — is on mobile promotions, including contests, coupons and deals.

Half of the local businesses surveyed this summer said they were planning to participate in mobile marketing this year, according the report, Main Street Goes Mobile.

To put an exclamation point the importance of companies involved in mobile marketing, New York-based mobile marketing company Augme Technologies said Tuesday that it was closing on its deal to buy Kirkland-based mobile marketing and advertising company HipCricket in a cash and stock deal valued at up to $72 million. We previously reported the deal in early August.

Mobile ad spending is projected to double every year for the next five years. By 2016, local mobile marketing spending would top $18 billion for advertising and $4 billion for promotions, according to the report. That’s more than Main Street businesses are spending on traditional web-based advertising today, according to Borrell.

Borrell says that local companies are warming up to mobile marketing at a faster rate than local businesses warmed up to cable advertising in the 1980s or internet advertising 10 years ago.

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