Facebook CTRs Rise 20%, Ad Impressions Soar 41%
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, April 22, 2014
While user growth remains a real concern, Facebook appears to be perfecting the art of monetization. Indeed, the social giant saw click through rates (CTRs) increase 20% between the fourth quarter
of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014, while ad impressions were up a whopping 41%.That’s according to Adobe’s latest Social Media Intelligence Report, which also found that revenue per visit (RPV) coming from Facebook grew by 2% quarter-over-quarter.
By contrast, RPV rates from Twitter and Tumblr declined by 23% and 36%, respectively, quarter-over-quarter.
What is Facebook doing right? Despite its Top Dog status, the company that Mark Zuckerberg built continues to innovate at a rate comparable to many start-ups, according to Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index.
“Companies like Facebook are making changes to their algorithms and adding functionalities like auto-play of videos, which impact brands and users and how they engage with content,” Gaffney explained in Adobe’s new report.
More broadly, Facebook ad clicks and impressions are on the rise with clicks continuing to outpace impressions. Facebook’s ad clicks increased 70% year-over-year, and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter, with ad impressions up 40% and 41%, respectively.
Facebook’s ad CTR jumped 160% year-over-year, and 20% quarter-over-quarter.
However, Facebook’s cost per click (CPC) dipped 2% year-over-year, and 11% quarter-over-quarter, following what Adobe described as a strong holiday season.
Also of note, brand posts with embedded video gained traction in the first quarter, with 58% more engagement quarter-over-quarter and 25% growth year-over-year. Facebook video plays increased 785% year-over-year, and 134% quarter-over-quarter following the introduction of auto-plays for videos in the fourth quarter of 2013.
However, text-only Facebook brand posts are losing share and engagement, but posts with links rose 167% quarter-over-quarter, and 77% year-over-year.
Year-over-year, Twitter and Facebook referred RPV increased 5% and 11%, respectively, but Twitter driven RPVs dipped 23% quarter-over-quarter.
Tumblr referred RPV rates are up 55% year-over-year, but slumped 36% quarter-over-quarter.
In its report, Adobe analyzes paid, earned and owned social media trends, based on 260 billion Facebook ad impressions, 226 billion Facebook post impressions, 17 billion referred visits from social networking sites, and seven billion brand post interactions including comments, likes and shares. Paid social data is derived from aggregated Adobe Marketing Cloud data.
4 comments about "Facebook CTRs Rise 20%, Ad Impressions Soar 41%".
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I notice none of the starting points against which increases are measured are mentioned here. So, let me help. a 20% increase in Facebook ad CTRs (recently estimated to average .04%), raises the bar to almost 1-in-2000 (statistical zero by any measure). And when you consider that it only took a 41% increase in impressions to achieve this, relative performance is actually way down. But I'm sure Facebook is one of Adobe's favorite clients, so why let the truth get in the way of a good story. Idiotic and self-serving doesn't begin to describe this foolishness. Besides, it's just a matter of days before we'll be reading about the latest click-fraud revelation. What will be really interesting is if anybody from Facebook weighs in to defend its Tallest Midget title.
Have to agree with Mike Einstein here...amidst all of this "good news", CTR rates declined. That is probably the only real stat in the article.
The other mislead on this is the change to the News Feed - less presentation of your followers and more of the advertising so they manipulated the percentage.
The fact that the videos auto start increases their play numbers dramatically.
Brand posts with links will always get more engagement that straight text posts - the links are calls to action and enticing.
It is easy as Mike notes to use numbers to make things seem hugely improved. The fact that teenagers - the first users of FB are now walking away leaving the space to the marketers may be a bigger indicator that other drops will come along too - remember MySpace - they were kings once but once the kids left it could not sustain itself.
If FB is not the tool of the college aged audience marketers will move to engage them elsewhere and their higher engagement with all things digital will see the wheel turn once again. But FB has value - just not as much as many believe. Likes are ego strokes - conversion is the thing - give us those numbers.
Yeah, as I read the piece my incredulity was initially fired by @Frank's point re their a massive demotion of organic brand distro in lieu of paid placement. That alone drives up all the faux stats in any MOM / QOQ or YOY analysis --- cept for the only stat that really matters here as @Mike sez which is CTR. Uh-oh....