The debate about the effectiveness and impact of display advertising has returned to the news in the last few days as ComScore’s new Ad Metrix tool highlighted the fact that Facebook served a massive 21.6% of all display adverts in the UK during the month of April (see Brand Republic for more details). This equates to over 12.5 Billion ad impressions in a single month.

Now I guess that Facebook being the number one ad publisher is only common sense really, after all it is still by far the most used website on the internet, despite Twitter making a serious challenge to this claim in recent months.  But the fact that the next nearest display ad publisher, Microsoft Websites, achieved less than 1/3 of the ad impressions with figures of 3.8 Billion, demonstrates the huge advertising potential that Facebook offers.

These stats make very interesting reading, and they will undoubtedly have marketing professionals once again questioning the effectiveness of display advertising.

Do people buy from adverts displayed on Social Networks? Surely people are on these sites to socialise and not to buy goods and services!

Do these display adverts have any impact on the viewer when there is so much else going on on the page?

Etc, etc – the questions go on.

Although I cannot give you a definitive answer to whether display adverting is an effective use of your valuable online marketing budget, what I will say is take a look at the type of companies who are spending the most on display advertising (again published by ComScore recently). 5 of the top 10 display advertisers in April where telecoms companies.

Why? Well these companies rely heavily on reinforcing brand awareness and it is an ongoing process for them. They do not know when you or I may want to change out telecoms provider, but when we do make that decision they want to know that we are aware of their brand. These companies are not necessarily looking to make a sale from their display advertising instantly, they just want to ensure that we know they are out there – and what better way to do that than have a strong presence on our favourite website.

Obviously not all of us can afford to take this route. Generally we need to know that our money is being spent effectively, providing a good level of that all important phrase, Return On Investment.

However, if building brand awareness is one of your targets, and you have some funds to put towards this aim then I suggest that running display ads on Social Networks is an excellent place to start.