Propensity to Click-Through is positively correlated with age – propensity to ‘Like’ is Not

SocialCode announced results from a new Facebook advertising research study. The research examined over four million data points across over 50 clients from a wide variety of industries to get a better understanding of how age and gender affect click-through rates (CTR) and ‘Like’ rates on Facebook. Results show that for ads with a ‘Like’ button, older Facebook users have a higher CTR while younger Facebook users will tend to click ‘Like’ directly within the Facebook ad.

“In general, younger Facebook users are more comfortable using the ‘Like’ button than older users at this point,” said Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO, SocialCode. “With inline fan ads on Facebook, older users have a high level of interaction and curiosity about the ads as evidenced by their high CTRs, whereas younger users have a higher propensity to click the ‘Like’ button right in an ad on Facebook. We assume that while older users are adopting Facebook at a high rate, they are also the newest subset to join the social network, meaning they may not have high friend numbers so ads are less likely to have social context in advertisements.”

AGE FINDINGS

The SocialCode study found that while age has a strong positive effect on whether a user will click; it oftentimes has the opposite effect on the likelihood of the user becoming a fan of a page.

50+ year-old users, the oldest segment in the study, are 28.2 percent more likely to click through and 9 percent less likely to ‘Like’ than 18-29 year-old users, the youngest group observed

Versus the rest of the younger population on Facebook, 50+ users see a 22.6 percent higher CTR and 8.4 percent lower ‘Like’ rate

GENDER FINDINGS

When broken down by gender, age has a much more pronounced effect on CTR for women than it does for men, whereas for men there is a stronger effect on ‘Like’ rate than women.

Overall, women are 11 percent more likely to click on an ad

‘Like’ rates are almost even for men and women; men are actually 2.2 percent more likely to ‘Like’ an ad than women

For women, CTR is 31.2 percent higher for the 50+ age group versus 18-29 year olds, men only see a 16.2 percent difference between the age groups

Versus all age groups, 50+ women’s CTR is 22 percent higher versus a 16.4 percent difference for males

The oldest male segment has an 11.7 percent lower ‘Like’ rate than the youngest segment, and 9.5 percent lower ‘Like’ rate versus all age groups. Women only see a 7.2 percent and 7.9 percent difference respectively

The age and gender research study conducted by SocialCode examined over four million data points for ads containing a ‘Like’ button across over 50 clients in different verticals for the past ten months. While performance varies greatly based on multiple variables, this study looks at the aggregate trends for gender and age seen in the marketplace.

For more information at http://www.socialcode.com/>