I'm often asked how the influence of one channel affects the metrics of another channel. I've recently had the opportunity to test this across channels and here's what I found.
We've recently gotten some press and I wasn't impressed with the performance of our existing ads on Facebook. Compared to search, our Social ROAS was dramatically lower and needed to find the secret sauce to making this a working channel. With the amount of levers Facebook gives, I tweaked and tweaked various messaging, audience targeting and display ad units but none of them had a significant positive impact.
At the end, I found the answer - video ads on Facebook! It differentiates from our competitors and there's a higher barrier of entry to create the content. But the missing piece of the puzzle was that I also found a lift in our direct traffic which wasn't being attributed.
1st Week - Turned on Social and saw slight increase in Direct visitors
2nd Week - With Social continued to be on, there was an consistent increase in Direct visitors
3rd Week - Turned off Social and saw decline in Direct visits
In conclusion, the social channel has a strong impact on the percentage lift in direct site traffic and should be considered when considering ROAS. From what this test shows, ~50% of the clicks from Social was unattributed to the social channel and contributed to a lift in Direct traffic.
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