Inspired by this experiment where some folks ran blank banner ads to test the CTR (click-through rate %) of empty white-space or solid color ads on the google display network, I figured testing this on Facebook would be fun.

So I did. I ran this ad below, which comprised of whitespace with a black border on Facebook for 48 hours. The bid was $3.00 just to ensure it ran.

The targeting was:

It only served 16,000 impressions before I shut it off, but here’s the funny thing. It got a 0.009% CTR. Which is LOL, considering that most ads on Facebook get a 0.03% CTR. That means that nearly 1/3 of the clicks are “white noise”, or misclicks on Facebook. In other words, if you ran a blank ad for your campaign, you’d get nearly 1/3 of the clicks you’re getting right now.

The data set is pretty small, but intriguing. A blank ad, served 16,000 times actually managed to get a 0.009% CTR on FB.

Time to switch it back on and see what a larger dataset will do…

Please share this with friends who may find this useful. Thank you!