Social Media Ads Are More Cost-Efficient Than Other Types Of Digital Advertising

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Neustar is out with its third quarter installment of the "Global Media Intelligence Report," and the key takeaway is that social media advertising is better performing, at a more cost-efficient price, than other marketing channels - portals, networks, and exchanges.

First, it's important to understand the differences between the channels that were looked at in the study. Neustar defines them as such:

Exchange: Technology platform that facilitates the bidded buying and selling of online media advertising inventory from multiple ad networks.

Network: An aggregation of ad ad space supply from publishers and matching it with advertiser demand.

Portal: A website that bring information together from diverse sources in a uniform way (e.g. Yahoo).

For its study, Neustar analyzed approximately 140 billion ad events, 60 billion impressions, and 32 million conversions.

• In the third quarter, social media ads had a 34% higher performance than the average across all channels.
• For the first time in the study's history, social media now leads all other channels in Neustar's "reach efficiency" index.
• The study also labels social media as the most cost-efficient channel for reaching the most exclusive consumers. (Neustar)

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