Study: Facebook advertising continues to boom

Facebook's ad business continues to grow, with click-through rate (CTR) and ad impressions up 20 percent and 41 percent, respectively, in Q1 compared to the previous quarter.

In addition, while revenue per visit (RPV) from Facebook increased by 2 percent over the same period, it fell by 23 percent for Twitter and 36 percent for Tumblr following a strong holiday season. These are the findings of Adobe's latest Social Media Intelligence Report, which tracks the development of paid, earned and owned social media on a quarterly basis.

The Adobe Social Media Intelligence Report is the industry's most comprehensive analysis due to its extensive data set. It is based on 260 billion ad impressions on Facebook, 226 billion Facebook posts, 17 billion referred visits from social networks, and 7 billion interactions with brands including comments, likes, and shares. Paid social media data was aggregated from Adobe Marketing Cloud data.

"Social media continued to grow in the first quarter of the year - missing the expected dip after a good holiday season," said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index. "Marketers are getting better at reaching audiences across multiple social media channels, and companies such as Facebook are changing their algorithms and adding features such as autoplay video. This is impacting brands and how users use content."

Other interesting findings of the study:

- Paid Social Media: Ad clicks and ad impressions on Facebook are on the rise, with clicks growing at a faster rate. They grew 70 percent year-over-year and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter. Ad impressions were up 40 and 41 percent, respectively. CTR virtually exploded by 160 percent year-on-year, and increased by 20 percent quarter-on-quarter. However, Facebook's cost per click (CPC) fell 2 percent year over year and 11 percent quarter over quarter.

- Earned Social Media: Brand posts with embedded videos picked up significantly in Q1, with 58 percent more interactions quarter-over-quarter and 25 percent more year-over-year. Facebook video play rates increased 785 percent in a year and 134 percent in Q1. Auto-play video was introduced by Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2013. Text-only brand posts Facebook is losing market share and interaction rates are dropping, but posts with links increased 167 percent quarter-over-quarter and 77 percent year-over-year.

- Owned Social Media: Revenue per visit from Twitter and Facebook increased by 5 percent and 11 percent, respectively, compared with the previous year. However, Twitter's RPV decreased 23 percent quarter-over-quarter. RPV coming from Tumblr increased 55 percent year-over-year and decreased 36 percent quarter-over-quarter. LinkedIn shined with a 15 percent market share of social traffic to B2B high-tech sites. Only Facebook generated more traffic in this area in Q1, with a 52 percent market share.

You can find everything about the study and graphics at the following link:
Adobe Digital Index: Social Intelligence Report (PDF)