Facebook Serving 31% of all Banner Ads…Really?
According to comScore Ad Metrix’s latest report on display ads for the 1st Q of 2011, Facebook is serving about one out of every three banner ad impressions (31.2%) in the U.S.
No other publisher comes close to Facebook according to comscore. Yahoo is the closest with 10.1%. Google sites only serve 2.5% of the total.
On these numbers Facebook deserves its valuation.
But then I stopped. I don’t remember seeing too many banner ads on Facebook. Could comscore be including the test/image CPC ads that are served on the right hand side of every page.
I requested clarification from comscore and sure enough these text/image ads are included in the calculation of facebook’s banner ad serving capability.
“We collect ad impression data on the ads that appear on the right-hand side of Facebook (text/image ads), as well as any ads served by 3rd party ad servers through Facebook apps (such as in the ones served by the Flixster app below).”
This report indicates that Facebook is the leading network for online display ads and should be included in every display buy.
I don’t think this is the case. How can you compare the banners on the homepage of Yahoo for brand and awareness to a text image ad?
By including these text/image ads as display advertising comscore is inflating the size and value of facebook. What about the test/image ads that are served by other publishers e.g AOL Sponsored Listings. Google also provides this type of inventory on Youtube. This inventory is not included in Comscore’s report.
Facebook is critically important to every online marketing campaign but for display buys, lets not mix text/image ads with banner ads.
