So you've created your facebook application or have a great idea for an application that users would enjoy but aren't sure whether the effort will pay off? Perhaps you've heard that advertising on facebook yields very low click through rates?

One of the main advantages of launching a facebook application is the fast rate at which it can spread throughout the user community. While there is a fairly low click through rate overall, advertisers still choose to advertise on the facebook network because of the exposure their business receives. Within days an ad can receive over 1 million impressions increasing brand awareness.

The metrics to analyse with advertising and publishing ads on facebook are the CTR or click through rate and the eCPM - estimated cost per thousand impressions. CTR is the percentage associated with the number of clicks an ad receives based on how many times it has been displayed. Impressions is the term that denotes the number of times the ad is displayed and the eCPM is an estimate on the cost for advertising per thousand impressions.

As a publisher its important to choose an ad network that yields and maintains a reasonable return, and unless you plan to change every few weeks then you'll generally end up with one your either satisfied with or stuck with. The factors that you can easily control are the ones to focus on and these include ad size, position and content to a degree. Our experience with this has been a result of trial and error however we have discovered one main interesting point worth mentioning.

Ad position and size: With our experience we've found that often the main banner at the top of the screen where users are expecting to see an ad is sometimes overlooked by users. Our application has a large banner at the top of the interface and a banner almost half the size at the footer. Interestingly the smaller banner that users sometimes have to scroll down to is the one of the two that is the greater asset. The point is that there are cases where the non-intuitive decision is the one that will give the better result.

The best approach is the careful one, don't invest all your time and effort at the outset and plan to be flexible. There is no guaranteed formula. Best of luck and let us know how you go!