Facebook Engagement Rates Continue to Surge in Q2

July 26, 2012

adobe-avg-facebook-post-engagement-rate-q22011-q22012-july2012.pngAverage Facebook brand post engagement rates have skyrocketed over the past year, details Adobe [pdf] in a July 2012 report. Average post engagement grew by 338% year-over-year in Q2, and 60% quarter-over-quarter, following on from impressive year-over-year growth in Q1. Also in Q2, brand investment increased by 21% quarter-over-quarter and 84% year-over-year.

Adobe attributes the increase in engagement rates to platform changes, use of new metrics, and more effective brand marketing. The study projects Facebook brand pages to increase by another 45% by year’s end.

Facebook Mobile Ads Said Performing Well

adparlor-avg-facebook-ad-ctr-by-type-july2012.pngRecent research from TBG Digital has shown Facebook’s mobile ads to be high-performing in terms of click-through rates (CTRs), and a study released in July [pdf] from AdParlor appears to support this finding. Examining 200 million ad impressions from large client brands across more than 10 verticals that leveraged mobile, the study reveals that CTRs on mobile ad campaigns were 15 times higher than on non-mobile campaigns (1.32% vs. 0.086%). The study compares mobile ads (which are by default Sponsored Stories) to non-mobile Sponsored Stories. It also bears mentioning that because Facebook only launched the ability to serve ads specifically on mobile devices on June 5th, the data examined covers only slightly more than a month.

Meanwhile, the AdParlor report also finds that cost-per-click (CPC) is 22% lower for mobile ads ($0.42) than for non-mobile Sponsored Stories ($0.54), but mobile ad conversion rates are also 24% lower than non-mobile Sponsored Stories (68.4% vs. 90.18%). As an explanation for this finding, AdParlor suggests that: because Facebook measures new fans by looking at click-connections as well as impression-connections, given the volume of ads that are shown on the web, the chances of impression-connections are much higher than on mobile; users clicking on mobile ads are quickly scrolling down and missing the like button on the fan page; some users are mistakenly clicking on mobile ads; and mobile load times may be deterring users from waiting for the fan page to load.

Fans Coming From Mobile Like and Comment More, Click Less

Further details from the AdParlor study indicate that for every 1,000 fans driven from mobile to a brand’s page, the brand received an average of 10.5 comments, compared to 8.5 comments for every 1,000 fans received from a non-mobile placement. Similarly, fans coming from mobile generated 200 post likes per 1,000, compared to 122.9 for non-mobile fans.

Fans coming from non-mobile placements, though, have much higher engagement for clicks (52.5 per 1,000 vs. 8), video plays (4 vs. 0.5), posts (20.9 vs. 2.5), and photo views (239.2 vs. 36.1).

Other Findings:

  • According to AdParlor, of the verticals studied, entertainment (2.02%) had the highest CTR for mobile ads, followed by parenting (1.14%), beauty (1.04%, auto (1.02%), alcohol (0.88%), and finance (0.53%). Entertainment (0.265%) also had the highest CTR for non-mobile Sponsored Stories, though the rankings differ beyond this vertical, with auto (0.13%) in second, followed by alcohol (0.107%).
  • When choosing device-specific broad category targets, advertisers are seeing the highest CTRs when targeting Android devices (1.227%), with Blackberry (0.761%) also slightly ahead of the iPhone (0.756%). The report notes that these CTRs are all lower than the overall mobile ad CTR cited in the report, due to the possibility of creating ads without selecting a device-specific broad category. The report also indicates that “if a user accesses Facebook via an iPhone – and an advertiser creates an ad targeted with mobile placement and the iPhone BCT – but that same user then accesses Facebook via an Android device – that user could see the ad intended for an iPhone user on his Android device. The report admits that though the percentage is small and unlikely to skew the data in a significant way, this bears mentioning.

About the Data: The Adobe analysis of Facebook performance is based on index derived from data captured by Adobe AdLens and Adobe Social, which are part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite. The index’s data compromises over 250 billion impressions and activity of 46 million fans for 225 companies in the automotive, CPG, financial services, media and entertainment, and retail industries.

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