Battlefield 3 Facebook Ads Led To 440% Return For Electronic Arts

When publishers are ramping up on advertising for an upcoming game, Facebook ads don't seem like a natural place to start. If EA's success with Facebook ads for Battlefield 3 is anything to go on, however, maybe they should be. In a recent investor call – Facebook's first one since its IPO – Facebook COO Sheryl K. Sandberg highlighted Electronic Arts' success in using Facebook ads to push the extremely popular game, saying that Electronic Arts spent $2.75 million on ads and now attributes $12.1 million in sales to the marketing campaign.

That's a whopping 440% return-on-investment for the publisher. It isn't just EA that hit it big with Facebook ads either, with Sandberg stating that independent analysis shows a hefty percentage of campaigns delivering a return of 3x or better:

Independent analysis of more than 60 campaigns, 45 of which were completed in the first half of this year, show that 70 per cent of those campaigns delivered a return on ad spend of 3x or better. And 49 per cent of those campaigns delivered a return of 5x or better.

The write-up on GamesIndustry International points out that EA's methods of figuring out its return weren't made clear, but even if EA's numbers are off by a bit, that still leaves plenty of room for the publisher to make a significant return-on-investment. This is a really encouraging report for those considering rolling out a Facebook ad campaign, so if anything, expect to see more video game companies using Facebook to push their latest games in the future.