AdRoll Report Highlights Importance Of Mobile Retargeting On Facebook

Facebook has enjoyed massive success with mobile ads, which helped the social network boost revenue by 61% year-over-year, and the retargeting firm AdRoll has released new data about retargeting on Facebook that further illustrates the importance of mobile.

In comparison to web retargeting, click-through rates were 8.1 times higher when retargeting consumers on the News Feed via the Facebook Exchange (FBX), whereas click-through rates on mobile devices were 9.1 times higher.  Another important note is that the ads cost 43% less on mobile than they do on desktop.

AdRoll explained in its report that “now that there are a variety of ways to retarget across the world’s largest social network, and the ability to reach users across a range of devices, we wanted to break down the results so marketers can decide what makes sense for their business, and what to expect.”

For AdRoll’s research, the company wanted to analyze the effect of introducing mobile.  For the recently release report, AdRoll reviewed data from over 800 million impressions across 215 AdRoll advertisers running retargeting campaigns on Facebook on desktop and mobile, and across the web.

Some of the highlights of the AdRoll report include:

• The CPM cost of News Feed ad impressions on mobile is 57% lower than News Feed impressions on desktop, and generate a 10% higher CTR.  This results in a 61% lower CPC for ads in the News Feed on mobile compared to the News Feed on desktop.

• When layering News Feed campaigns on desktop onto web campaigns, the sample of advertisers delivered on average 5.7% more impressions yet generated an impressive 53% more clicks.

• Much like News Feed on desktop, mobile is ideal for driving high click-through-rates and achieving downstream ROI goals.  By adding mobile to an existing campaign of web and News Feed ads on desktop, AdRoll’s sample saw on average of 29% more clicks.

• As a complementary channel, News Feed on mobile adds an average of 3.8% incremental conversions to an existing retargeting mix of web and News Feed on desktop.

• The apparel, beauty and technology industries have had the quickest adoption of mobile ad sizes, while media and entertainment serve the highest-performing mobile campaigns.

The data is significant because it backs the suggestion that Facebook may continue keeping its mobile inventory off the FBX.  However, the data doesn’t suggest that going with only mobile is the most effective choice.  A combination of desktop and mobile retargeting appears to be best for increasing campaign effectiveness across the board.