A recent study by EyeTrackShop (ETS) has revealed that due to the way Facebook users view it (see ETS’ heatmap below), “Facebook’s page post ad visually outperforms its standard ad.” The ads that imitate posts on your timeline yield “200% higher visibility” than the right sidebar ads [more here].
However, regardless of the types of ads that you use (Facebook, Twitter, paid search campaigns, etc), before wasting your advertising dollars, tweak your settings to display your ad only to your target audience. For example, if you run a taxi service which covers Washington, DC and vicinities, no need to bid on taxi-related keywords/key-phrases nationally. Serve your ads only to Internet users in DC, Northern Virginia, and Southern Maryland.
Here is a Facebook “page post ad” that I couldn’t help but spot on my timeline yesterday night:
While, there are other things that could be improved here, the main one that jumps at me is that they are located in (and servicing!) Southern California. Malibu is 2,700 miles away from me. No matter how well they do their job, there is absolutely no sane way that they can wash my windows. Why waste the money on serving this ad to me?