80% of Facebook users have never bought anything as a result of seeing an ad on the site. Reuters, who reported the results of their new poll carried out with Ipsos, seems surprised by this statistic but I only wonder who the heck are the 20% who actually have responded to a Facebook ad? Who knew that people still looked at those ads?
The online poll also found that over a third of Facebook users are spending less time on the site than they were six months ago.
From Reuters:
While the survey did not ask how other forms of advertising affected purchasing behavior, a February study by research firm eMarketer suggested Facebook fared worse than email or direct-mail marketing in terms of influencing consumers’ decisions.
"It shows that Facebook has work to do in terms of making its advertising more effective and more relevant to people," eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said.
Those concerns were exacerbated last month when General Motors Co, the third largest advertiser in the United States, said it would stop paid advertising on Facebook.
Facebook declined to comment in detail on the survey, but referred to case studies of companies such as Nutella, which found that a 15 percent increase in sales was attributable to Facebook, and restaurant chain Applebee’s, whose Facebook ads delivered a threefold return on investment.
There is a surge of negative stories about Facebook following the recent IPO but if anything, the true overvaluation of Facebook has been under-reported. They’re being valued as a massive-growth stock, but they are not even close to Google in terms of monetizing traffic efficiently.