By Liam Dowd - April 22nd, 2014

Facebook referral revenues increase, when to post new video content and understanding the hashtag economy

Post your new videos on a Friday

Video has become the most shared content across all social media platforms. According to the latest research from Adobe’s Social Media Intelligence Report, video post and ad plays on Facebook alone have increased by a massive 785% year-on-year. The findings that include Q1 2014 also reveal that quarter of Facebook video plays and 16 per cent of post impressions take place on Fridays.

Says Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index: “Social media continued to grow even after a strong holiday quarter and the seasonal slowdown expected in Q1. 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.”

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 two percent 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 high-tech sites. Only Facebook drove more traffic (52%) to B2B high-tech sites in Q1.

Learn more about how to leverage video content across social media with our new three-part series starting today!

Facebook Post by Type

Facebook referral revenue grows

Adobe’s Social Media Intelligence report shows that Facebook continues to offer the most cost effective means across all social media networks to grow revenue per visit. Facebook referred revenue per visit is up 11% year-over-year and 2% quarter-over-quarter. Twitter referred revenue per visit is up 5% year-over-year and down 23% quarter-over-quarter. Tumblr referred revenue per visit is up 55% year-over-year, but down 36% quarter-over-quarter.

Adobe recommends: “While Pinterest and Tumblr are doing better than last year, they’re still unable to provide consistent referred revenue outside of the holiday shopping season. Facebook, however, continues to provide value year round.”

Revenue per visit by referrer

Digital marketers need to become even more social

Marketers continue to find social media a stress point according to research carried out by Adobe focusing on 1,004 US marketers carried out in February of this year. Social is recognised as a vital component of their corporation’s marketing activity, but the vast majority still don’t ‘think social’ as much as they should to ensure high levels of engagement are received over their campaigns.

The main findings of the research include:

  • 65% of marketers say they are more comfortable adopting new technologies once they become mainstream.
  • Marketers cite digital/social marketers (47%), data analysts (38%), creatives (38%) and mobile marketers (36%) as the key roles companies need to invest in over the next 12 months.
  • 61% of marketers see social media as the most critical marketing vehicle to focus on a year from now, followed closely by mobile at 51%. When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most important to their company’s marketing moving forward, personalization ranked highest.

The hashtag economy

With Twitter about to roll out a major overhaul of their user interface, the hashtag will become an even more useful marketing tool. A new infographic reveals that shorter, unique and conversational hashtags are the most effective.

hashtag engagement

Search and social advertising

Paid search is still leading the pack when it comes to digital marketing. However, according to Kenshoo, Facebook social ad spending is growing by over a third (37%) compared to search advertising, which can only manage 10% annual growth.

Among the key year-over-year findings in the research:

  • Search ad spend increased 10% and social spend increased 37%
  • Search advertiser revenue increased 12% and social revenue increased 191%
  • Search clicks increased 8% and social clicks increased 1%
  • Search average cost-per-click was $0.59 (up 2%) and social was $0.25 (up 35%)

"Social advertising is growing fast and, while paid search still commands the lion's share of online ad budgets, both channels have proven to deliver strong return on investment," said Aaron Goldman, chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. "The key for marketers is to approach search and social holistically and leverage advanced cross-channel platforms to automate and optimize campaigns."

"Search has long been the rock of digital marketing plans and will continue to be for its ability to capture intent and drive direct response results. The fact that search is still growing at double-digit yearly rates shows there is plenty of opportunity out there for scale," added Goldman. "Meanwhile, social advertising has clearly emerged as a vital always-on component of the media mix and its triple-digital growth in revenue proves that marketers are successfully converting social engagement into tangible business outcomes."

Search and Social Snapshot

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.

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