FB ad business grows, Twitter’s revenue per visitor dips: Adobe report

• FB video plays increased 785% YoY and 134% QoQ since autoplay introduced
• Revenue per visit from Twitter and Tumblr plunge 23% and 36% respectively

 

IN the first quarter of 2014, Facebook’s ad business continued to grow with click through rate (CTR) and ad impressions increasing by double-digits quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), 20% and 41% respectively.
 
While revenue per visit (RPV) coming from Facebook grew by 2% QoQ, RPV from Twitter and Tumblr declined by 23% and 36% respectively, following a strong holiday quarter, Adobe Inc said in a statement, citing its Social Media Intelligence Report.
 
The report analyses paid, earned and owned social media trends for Q1 and is 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, the company added.
 
“Social media continued to grow even after a strong holiday quarter and the seasonal slowdown expected in Q1,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index.
 
“Marketers are learning how to best reach their audiences across different social media channels and 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," she added.
 
Additional findings include:

• Paid social trends: Facebook ad clicks and impressions are on the rise with clicks continuing to outpace impressions. Facebook’s ad clicks increased 70% year-over-year (YoY) and 48% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), with ad impressions up 40% and 41% respectively. Facebook’s ad CTR jumped 160% YoY and 20% QoQ. However, Facebook’s cost per click (CPC) dipped 2% YoY and 11% QoQ following a strong holiday season.

• Earned social trends: Brand posts with embedded video gained traction in Q1 – with 58% more engagement QoQ and 25% growth YoY. Facebook video plays increased 785% YoY and 134% QoQ following auto-plays for videos being implemented in Q4 2013. Meanwhile, text-only Facebook brand posts are losing share and engagement, but posts with links rose 167% QoQ and 77% YoY.

• Owned social trends: Twitter and Facebook referred RPV increased YoY (5% and 11% respectively), but Twitter driven RPVs dipped 23% QoQ. Tumblr referred RPV is up 55% YoY, but slumped 36% QoQ. LinkedIn stood out with a 15% share of social traffic to B2B (business-to-business) high-tech sites. Only Facebook drove more traffic (52%) to B2B high-tech sites in Q1.

Adobe Digital Index said it publishes research on digital marketing and other topics of interest to senior marketing and e-commerce executives across industries. Research is based on the analysis of select, anonymous and aggregated data from over 5,000 companies worldwide that use Adobe Marketing Cloud to obtain actionable data and analysis of activity on their websites.
 
The Social Intelligence Report and other reports are available here.
 
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