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Yahoo Native Ads: A Well-Kept Secret

By The SHSMD Team posted 07-24-2017 12:23 PM

  
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I’ve been noticing lately that Yahoo has been consistently outperforming Facebook in terms of total website clicks on UC Davis Health’s call-to-action campaigns. Every advertiser knows that Facebook is highly efficient and the first place to run ads on a limited budget, but upon closer inspection, Yahoo seemed to significantly produce higher results than Facebook in nearly every campaign. Why was this?


CRT vs CPC
On first glance, it’s clear that Yahoo’s click-through rates (CTRs) were lower than Facebook’s. However, Yahoo more than makes up for it on impressions delivered and significantly lower cost-per-click (CPC).

The table below lists several campaigns at UC Davis Health during 2016 in which both Facebook and Yahoo were used. It shows that Yahoo frequently produced twice as many clicks as Facebook (in one case even outperforming Facebook by a factor of ten) despite spending more on Facebook than Yahoo.

Campaign

Clicks to Website from FB

Clicks to Website from YH

YH/FB

 

 

 

 

Open Enrollment

4,997 

10,153

2.0

Nursing School Recruitment

1,913

4,640

2.4

Alzheimer's Caregivers Workshop

448

1,172

2.6

Midtown Clinic Opening

3,903

6,279

1.6

Nelson Lecture

76

789

10.4


What Counts As A “Click?”
It’s important to note that it only looked like Facebook was performing better until we learned that their “total clicks” metric included all clicks related to that ad, including likes, comments, shares, etc. When looking at just clicks to our website, we saw that Yahoo was actually performing significantly better.

Consider Your Audience
Additionally, Yahoo reaches a broader audience – especially people who are not on Facebook. That could be a vital factor to consider, depending on your target audience. Yahoo also seems to be especially successful at producing significantly higher video view rates than Facebook (more on this in a future blog).

Conclusion
I’ll be recommending Yahoo more often, especially if the objective is to drive traffic to a website. Facebook is still important for creating engagements and to reach certain highly-specific audiences due to the fact that it currently has more targeting capabilities than Yahoo. At the very least, I suggest campaigns test out both platforms to begin with before deciding how to move forward. You may be surprised.

To learn more about Native Ads and how they work, register for SHSMD Connections 2017 and attend What you Need to Know in Digital Advertising: Best Practices and Insights Monday, September 25 at 11:30 am.

Register
Posted July 27 | By Doreen Pichotti
Digital Advertising and Media Strategist
UC Davis Health
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