A year ago, running ads on Facebook resulted in low CPM's, atrocious click-through rates (CTR's), and virtually no conversion rates. One year on and it couldn't be more different. Recently run ads for our clients on Facebook and Paid Search (PPC - on Google) intended to drive traffic to a specific landing page or a Facebook Page designed specifically for the campaign across more than 7 countries have shown an increase in the results from Facebook. In the past we would get low CTR's on decent, but not great impression counts. The CTR rates were "display like" in the .02 to .04 percentage range. Compared to search results in the 2 to 5 percentage range. Facebook would deliver impressions but not so much those sort after click through rates. With recent campaigns we saw 100 times the impressions delivered on Facebook as we saw delivered through paid search. The click through rates were still under that of paid search but with the increase of impressions the same Dirham delivered the same number of clicks. The key point is that the inventory available on Facebook is huge, and its global.

There are 15 million Facebook users in the Middle East with the UAE accounting for 1.6 Million and Saudi Arabia 2.3 million. And it doesn't stop there, the rate of increase in countries such as Saudi Arabia is enormous. The Facebook audience are an active one, 50% of MENA Facebook users have selected their primary language as English, with 25% preferring French and 23% Arabic.

There are 5 million Facebook users in the GCC with Saudi Arabia accounting for 45%. As a platform Facebook has become viable in the region offering a multitude of advertising opportunities that reach the Middle East online audience. With so many expats in the region Facebook is most probably the only way to stay in touch with family and friends at home. We are seeing Facebook moving from a fan page to an effective advertising vehicle for promoting our campaigns and programs and the performance has been ramping up through the year. We expect Facebook will be ever increasingly used by our clients as part of their overall media mix this coming year.

What is vitally important to try an ensure is that your Facebook and PPC campaign are managed by the same agency or person. This will ensure you are able to clearly track the performance across both platforms. More importantly having PPC experts run both campaigns also enables you to prioritise and optimise your ad spend as the campaign gains momentum. Your budget should be managed in such a way that enables the agency to quickly divert funds to the best performing platform at a moment's notice. It will need a bit of trust on your part but if you pick the right agency you should be able to entrust that they will be able to provide you with the best performance across either platforms.