Retail: Social networks bring more traffic and sales

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and the like are boosting online sales.It is followed by Pinterest with a 244 percent increase, Twitter with 131 percent and Facebook with 72 percent.Facebook under pressureSocial traffic on retail websites has also increased, with Facebook coming under increasing pressure from its competitors, with Twitter and Pinterest showing the greatest momentum in Q4 with year-on-year growth of 125 and 89 percent respectively.The analysis of paid, earned and owned social media trends was conducted from Q4 2012 to Q4 2013. Quarter 2013 and is based on aggregated and anonymized website data from the retail, media, entertainment and travel industries.This included 240 billion ad impressions on Facebook, over 1.5 billion Facebook posts, 500 million unique visitors to social networks and 6.3 billion Facebook interactions (comments, shares and likes). Paid social media data was taken from Adobe Marketing Cloud.More market share for Facebook competition"We expect Facebook advertisers to massively expand their market share in 2014 with new innovative paid media opportunities," said Tamara Gaffney, Principal Analyst Adobe Digital Index. "It will therefore become increasingly important for marketers to optimize campaign spend across all social media channels and balance CPCs and CPMs to manage ROI."The key findings are:- Paid Social Media: Increasing consumer engagement is boosting the appeal of Facebook ads. For example, click-through rates (CTR) grew 365 percent over the year and cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) grew 437 percent. Facebook's cost per click (CPC) remained virtually unchanged, except for a 29 percent upward swing during the holiday season. The volume of Facebook ad clicks increased by 125 percent year-on-year.- Owned Social Media: Revenue per visit (RPV) of social networks hit a new high, especially during the holiday season, with quarter-over-quarter RPV growth on Twitter (84 percent), Pinterest (69 percent), Tumblr (38 percent) and Facebook (31 percent). While Facebook continued to contribute the most traffic during the period studied, Pinterest surpassed Facebook's RVP in Q4 in the UK. The same is expected this year with a view to the U.S.-. Earned Social Media: Interactions with brand posts on Facebook increased by 180 percent within one year, while post impressions increased by 150 percent at the same time. Posts with images generated a 650 percent higher interaction rate than text-only posts (up 10 percent), while interaction with posts that contained links, text or videos declined overall compared to the previous year.