In research conducted in August 2017 by media analytics company CivicScience, 45% of Internet users aged 13+ said they had never made a purchase based on an ad seen on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.

Breakdown:

• Don't use social media 35%
• Never made a purchase based on social media as 45%
• Bought from Facebook ad 16%
• Bought from Instagram ad 4%
• Bought from Twitter ad 2%
• Bought from Snapchat ad 1%

So is advertising on social media a waste of time and money?

Maybe, or maybe only sometimes.

In a 2016 survey by CPC Strategy 26% of respondents said they had clicked on a Facebook ad and gone on to make a purchase, vs.only 7% who said they had made a purchase without clicking on an ad.

So, unless behavior of users of social media has changed in the past year, in order to make sales from ads on social media platforms you need to create clickable ads because clicking an ad seems to move prospects well down your sales funnel.