Facebook Says Clicks Are Irrelevant, Urges Focus on Reach and Frequency

On a panel today at the IAB MIXX Conference during Advertising this week in New York, Facebook Director of Pricing and Measurement Brad Smallwood likened social media to the early days of TV which had no method of measurement until Arthur Nielsen introduced the rating point in 1950. He went on to argue that online marketers should focus on this system placing increased emphasis on reach and frequency rather than clicks.

As Todd Wasserman reports in Mashable, "Smallwood cited research from Nielsen (the company, not the founder) that showed a 0.07% correlation between high click-through rates and actual sales. Smallwood also rolled out some new data from a study conducted with Datalogix that found 99% of sales generated from online branding ad campaign came from consumers who saw ads, but didn't interact with them."

Read more of Todd's report here.