And why technology matters more than ever to come out on top for the next decade
By Zach Coelius

Facebook Exchange (FBX) is now open to the public. 11 new people join Facebook every second. One in seven people are on Facebook right now — resulting in one quarter of all internet page views.

Whatever the speculations may be about Facebook’s slowing growth, the reality is that it’s still the biggest website in the world. Imagine going from casting a fishing line in a pond to dropping a gigantic net in the Atlantic Ocean. That’s what it’s like to retarget your users on Facebook – infinite pageviews with nearly a billion fish available to hook. Not only is the inventory massive, but it’s there for a bargain. Right now on Facebook Exchange, we’re able to find these valuable fish at 4x the ROI and ⅕ the CPA; we expect to see those kinds of numbers for the foreseeable future for advertisers who bet big on retargeting on Facebook and other social networks.

Building the right technology at the right time

Remember the early days of Search and Google AdWords? Advertisers like eBay and Amazon jumped in at the right time with the right technology and built their entire businesses on early SEM adoption, eventually solidifying themselves as the direct response leaders for their respective categories. We believe that the opportunity will be just as massive in the early years of the Facebook Exchange, and we’ve built our technology around this platform. Since we were chosen as one of the early alpha companies in June, we’ve improved on our real-time bidding engine and data collection processes to handle the massive scale that Facebook requires, while also mining sharp insights into questions like, “When are people are seeing FBX ads?” “How much faster are they converting?” And the answers to all those questions have been astounding.

Facebook is more efficient

In a summary of our analysis of FBX, we’ve dedicated an infographic to size up the initial campaign results from Shutterfly and another early customer. The stats below further prove our belief that not only is Facebook Exchange a huge new opportunity for direct response advertising, but that it’s also one of the biggest bargains of the next five years. When we compared aggregate campaign data for FBX clients to traditional campaign data, we saw:

- 4x higher Click-through ROAS compared to retargeting on the traditional ad exchanges
- 2.2x higher post-click conversion rate
- 6.5x less Cost per click-through order (CPA)
- 18% – 30% lift in FBX conversions when comparing against control test of users

Facebook is always on

Not only are FBX campaigns extremely effective and efficient, but new and interesting patterns are arising around how people are seeing retargeted ads and converting through them on Facebook.

On the left is the number of times people are served an impression of an ad on traditional RTB display campaigns. It’s very clear that they’re seeing them when they come back home from work — during their leisure hours. On the right, FBX sees a different story. More impressions are served all throughout the day because people aren’t just on it after work — Facebook is the default opened tab on their laptops at work, and it’s the first site the visit when they wake up. This follows the general trend that Facebook is the #1 place where nearly one billion people spend their online leisure time. So unless Facebook figures out a way to retarget ads to people in their sleep, we’d say that’s pretty solid wall-to-wall ads coverage for advertisers!

Facebook users convert faster

This type of manic Facebook behavior may also help explain why we’re seeing a shorter conversion funnel with ads on FBX. Since Facebook is the place where people are spending a majority of their online leisure time, we found that conversions on FBX is 2x as likely to happen in the first two days than retargeting on the traditional ad exchanges.

[Real] time is money

Triggit’s been firing all of its engines for the Facebook Exchange, and we’re now one of the first real-time demand side platform to offer bidding based on a Facebook-specific algorithm. This means our clients can take advantage of a number of features on the social network, such as:

- Control tests and viewthrough attribution
- Optimization
- Dynamic creatives
- Frequency capping

To get started right away and see what your potential conversion volume and ROAS you can expect from retargeting on Facebook, shoot us an email at fbexchange@triggit.com to learn more. Time equals valuable impressions, after all — by the time you finish reading this blog post, 800 more people will have just signed up on Facebook.

For media inquiries, please contact:
press@triggit.com
415-205-6306