Facebook marketers focus on men

By contrast, males cost just 16 cents per thousand impressions.

A similar pattern was observed for the cost per click metric, with men averaging at 51 cents and women 68 cents.

Across all the data, men were revealed both to be exposed to more Facebook ads, and to click on more of these spots.

Advertisers followed the eyeballs, with a majority (53%) of budgets being allocated to reaching men.

Alan Osetek, president of Resolution Media, said: Women represent the majority of Facebook users, but it's cheaper to advertise to men.

"While this may seem counterintuitive given the laws of supply and demand in an auction marketplace, our advertisers capitalized on this trend."

In its latest financial results, for Q2 2012, Facebook said that ad revenues for the three-month period reached $992m. This is a 28% increase from the same period the previous year.

Recent research from eMarketer suggested that the site's ad revenues could reach $6bn per year by 2014.