• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 15, 2015

While the market for live-streaming apps is still taking shape, new findings show that Twitter's Periscope has a healthy lead on Meerkat.

Indeed, since its launch in late March, total traffic to Periscope has exceeded 6 million visitors -- nearly three times more than traffic to rival Meerkat, according to Adobe’s latest Social Intelligence report.

“Periscope knocked out Meerkat in the first round,” said Joe Martin, a senior analyst at Adobe Digital Index. Among other engagement drivers, Periscope has doubled its average daily mention count since adding Android availability in late May. From a content standpoint, social mentions of Periscope and Meerkat tripled their averages during the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao boxing match, in May.

More broadly, Martin said the rise of live-streaming apps has big implications for the social media ecosystem. “The introduction of these new social networks shows that social is still an open market for consumers’ attention,” he said. “Marketers should focus on optimizing social to ensure they stay on top of the latest trending network.”

Adobe based its findings on consumer data from more than 5,000 brand sites; 500 billion Facebook post impressions; 525 billion Google and Yahoo Bing ad impressions; and 8 million social streaming app mentions.

Adobe also found that global cost-per-click rates are flat year over year, but the U.S. market saw a healthy 6% rise in CPC rates. Year-over-year, click-through-rates (CTR) were up about 200%, with evidence of much higher rates for individual brands. Adobe credited improved targeting and better ad selection for less clutter and healthy user engagement.

By serving significantly fewer ads, meanwhile, Facebook saw clicks increase by 12%, year-over-year. Also, U.S. consumers judge Facebook more favorably than YouTube for serving ads of genuine interest -- 51% compared to 17%, respectively.

Regular Facebook users are also more likely to believe that personalization is helpful, Adobe found.