Table 1.
Facebook advertisement placement metrics by study activity.
| Facebook ad placement metrics by study activity | Placement | Impression device |
Reach | Clicks | Unique clicks | CTRa | uCTRb | Costc | CPCc,d | Costc per unique click | Costc per each enrolled participant |
| Focus group 1e (n=80) | |||||||||||
|
|
N/Af | N/A | 93,823 | 148 | 148 | 0.04 | N/A | $100.00 | $0.68 | N/A | $2.50 |
| Focus group 2g (n=80) | |||||||||||
|
|
N/A | N/A | 78,235 | 846 | 774 | 0.11 | 1.11 | $278.35 | $0.39 | $0.42 | $6.96 |
| Content advisory team 1h (n=24) | $32.52 | ||||||||||
|
|
Right column ads on home page | Desktop or laptop | 220,332 | 1667 | 1525 | 0.06 | 0.27 | $483.99 | $0.16 | $0.18 |
|
|
|
Right column ads | Desktop or laptop | 161,051 | 839 | 767 | 0.04 | 0.22 | $296.54 | $0.19 | $0.21 |
|
|
|
Unknown placement | Other | 335 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
|
| Content advisory team 2i (n=24) | $29.52 | ||||||||||
|
|
Right column ads on home page | Desktop or laptop | 52,184 | 418 | 381 | 0.07 | 0.51 | $101.12 | $0.21 | $0.23 |
|
|
|
Right column ads | Desktop or laptop | 37,327 | 168 | 157 | 0.05 | 0.35 | $46.29 | $0.22 | $0.23 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Desktop or laptop | 17,175 | 271 | 221 | 1.45 | 1.23 | $95.44 | $0.34 | $0.42 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Mobile phone or tablet | 133,202 | 1432 | 1256 | 1.82 | 1.51 | $465.65 | $0.33 | $0.39 |
|
|
|
Unknown placement | Other | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | |
| Beta testj (n=20) | $17.19 | ||||||||||
|
|
Right column ads on home page | Desktop or laptop | 13,276 | 71 | 67 | 0.11 | 0.4 | $24.36 | $0.27 | $0.28 |
|
|
|
Right column ads | Desktop or laptop | 12,071 | 84 | 79 | 0.1 | 0.53 | $35.05 | $0.28 | $0.28 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Desktop or laptop | 7006 | 144 | 115 | 1.56 | 1.36 | $40.90 | $0.26 | $0.30 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Mobile phone or tablet | 34,886 | 1430 | 1031 | 3.13 | 2.35 | $243.58 | $0.23 | $0.31 |
|
| RCTk (n=302) | $12.54 | ||||||||||
|
|
Right column ads on home page | Desktop or laptop | 54,304 | 607 | 548 | 0.17 | 0.79 | $455.27 | $0.72 | $0.77 |
|
|
|
Right column ads | Desktop or laptop | 43,736 | 411 | 386 | 0.12 | 0.81 | $346.01 | $0.68 | $0.72 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Desktop or laptop | 34,234 | 728 | 607 | 1.36 | 1.28 | $349.81 | $0.57 | $0.64 |
|
|
|
News Feed | Mobile phone or tablet | 194,084 | 10,535 | 7333 | 3.54 | 3.12 | $2635.36 | $0.35 | $0.42 |
|
a CTR: click-through rate.
b uCTR: unique click-through rate.
c All costs are in US dollars.
d CPC: cost per click.
e Facebook (FB) ad pricing structure: maximum bid per click of US $0.90. Daily budget: US $25.
f N/A: not applicable (FB did not have the information available at the time of recruitment).
g Initial FB ad pricing structure: maximum bid per click of US $0.90. Daily budget: US $25. Modifications to ad: 3 days into recruitment, the interest targeting was removed (eg, Katy Perry), criteria to target teenaged men “interested in men” was added, and the ad image to be more relevant to the population. Daily ad budget was also increased to US $100 and the maximum bid per click changed to US $0.74.
h FB ad pricing structure: maximum bid per click of US $0.69. Daily budget: US $150. Modifications to ad: before launch of content advisory team 1 ads, multiple variations of the same ad, in which the headline and tagline were different, were created.
i Daily budget: US $150. Modifications to ad: before launch of content advisory team 2 ads, pricing was modified to be optimized for clicks as opposed to preidentifying a maximum bid per click.
j Daily budget: US $100. The same FB ad settings as described in the content advisory team 2 were used in the beta test effort.
k RCT: randomized controlled trial. Daily budget ranged from US $50 to $100. Modifications to ad: during the RCT, FB added the option to select if one was attracted to “men or women,” which was integrated into the ad campaign (eg, allowing us to better target those that may identify as bisexual). Previously just the “men” or “women” options were available. New ad images were introduced toward the end of field that were thought to be more salient to specific populations (ie, younger participants, nonwhite race). Given the time span spent on recruitment ads were regularly adjusted to target based on age (eg, if we wanted to reach more 14-year-olds, ads were modified to specifically target those who are 14 years of age based on their FB profile).