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The ‘Sponsored Stories’ ad format that Facebook introduced recently, for their mobile section seems to be the answer to their prayers.

The new ad format is showing good results according to studies conducted by TBG Digital, AdParlor, Nanigans, and Spruce Media, three of Facebook’s biggest Ads API partners.

One reason why the Sponsored Stories format could be doing well is that they are related tot eh content that the user is reading and hence the rate of engagement is higher than it would be for unrelated ads.

Another factor is that on the desktop, users are shown seven ads per page, while on the mobile they are only shown a couple of ads per day. This smaller number of ads could indirectly make the user feel less imposed upon and may hence result in a better compliance rate.

Facebook mobile ad sponsored. Image courtesy of VentureBeat

TBG Digital conducted a study of 278,389,453 Sponsored Story ad impressions across 17 clients. They found a click-through rate of 1.14%. At $0.86 CPC, Facebook earns $9.86 per 1000 impressions (eCPM).

In contrast, desktop news feed Sponsored Stories get a 0.588% CTR. At $0.63 CPC, Facebook makes an eCPM of $3.72.

Desktop Sponsored Stories as well as traditional sidebar ads get 0.083% CTR at a $0.88 CPC. earning Facebook an eCPM of only $0.74.

In other words mobile Sponsored Stories are getting 13.7X the CTR and earn Facebook 11.2x what overall desktop ads earn.

Other Ads API companies have corroborated these findings.

AdParlor CEO Hussein Fazal, has also said that advertisers are lining up to buy the mobile Sponsored Stories. So the chances that mobile Sponsored Stories on Facebook will help Facebook to earn a lot of money are bright.

If this does actually happen it could help to raise the price of Facebook shares, which have not yet done quite as well as expected.