Facebook highlights factors that increase ad performance

In an attempt to boost its ad revenue and improve the quality of advertising, Facebook's measurement team is making public its research on the types of ads that work best on its platform.  

After talking with marketers, Facebook identified six elements of ad creative that impaceted upon recall and purchase consideration including two visual elements of focal point and noticeability and four that looked at messaging and a range of things, from whether it's easy to see the brand to whether the ad is succinct and to the point.  

They then asked 109 marketers to rate around 400 ads on each of the six elements. All were from the Facebook premium-engagement format, which appear on the right column of a Facebook page and is restricted by image size and copy length.   All of the ads chosen were brand or product ads rather than direct response.  

The results for recall highlighted three factors that were particularly important: Images needed to have an obvious focal point, the brand had to be clear and the ad needed to fit with the brand's personality.   

Not rocket science but at least an indicator of best practice winning out.  

Failing focal-points were fairly common, due to the lack of space for images, however this was increased by brands which opted for small product images on cluttered backgrounds. This got in the way of consumers recalling brands - therefore simplicity is best.  

The ads should also be clear about the brand they're promoting, which may sound obvious but many brands were obscured in the ads or missing associated brand colours.  

When looking at purchase consideration the main aspect was whether the ad rewarded the viewer. Very important in encouraging interaction.  

"Ads that were rewarding tended to be pretty clear -- there wasn't an overload of information," said Mr. Bruich, who conducted the study with measurement researcher Adrienne Polich. "But [the] rewarding ads also seemed to connect. The information seemed meaningful."  

The importance of offering a reward was the single-biggest creative predictor of an ad's success, which apparently surprised the Facebook team.  

The full study will be presented in the US next month however those that believe that bright colours or crazy fonts would create noticeability will be sorely disappointed as the survey found that this was not predictive of either recall or purchase consideration.  

So it's goodbye to psychedelic Facebook ads and hello to minimalism.