Facebook’s undisputed victory in ad personalisation is driving Google to make changes to its advertising business, according to Adobe Digital Index’s “Q3 Digital Advertising & Social Intelligence Report.”

Google’s recent release of Customer Match–a new tool that helps advertisers personalize display ads based on historic search data–is a direct response to consumers’ finding Facebook ads (51 per cent) more relevant than Google’s display ads, the majority of which run on YouTube (17 per cent), ADI posited. Google+ (6 per cent) and Pinterest (6 per cent) were the next-best rated, so Google is undoubtedly feeling the heat.

“Facebook ad click-through rates rose 35 per cent year over year, indicating that targeting efforts are paying off,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at ADI. “Marketers are using the platform more, and impressions are rebounding.”

As part of its analysis, ADI looked at consumer activity on branded sites from Q3 2014 to Q3 2015. It analyzed more than 900 billion digital ad impressions from search and social platforms (Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and Yandex), and also looked at more than 23 billion referred social visits from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn.