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Facebook's Click-Through Rates Flourish ... for Wall Posts

Estimates From Social-Media Firm Vitrue as High as 6.49%

Posted by Abbey Klaassen on 08.13.09 @ 10:17 AM

Who says click-through rates on Facebook suck?

Sure, click-through rates for general display ads on Facebook have been criticized for being rather unimpressive, but click-through rates for content on brand pages' walls are as high as 6.49%, according to estimates from Vitrue, a startup that helps marketers manage their social-media presences.

Earlier this week Vitrue announced a Social Relationship Manager suite with new planning and reporting tools for social media, including Facebook, where much of Vitrue's work is done. One of the things it has introduced is URL tracking, so it can measure click-through rates for links in wall posts and newsfeeds. Naturally, we wanted to find out what a typical click-through rate is for those messages.

Getting at the answer is a bit of science and a bit of guesswork, Vitrue acknowledged. That's because it's not always clear how many people are exposed to a link in a wall post, as it's syndicated out through newfeeds. In some cases people aren't online or on Facebook, which hinders total exposure to the message. To get at its click-through-rate estimate, Vitrue assumed that about one-twelfth of the Facebook audience is on the site at any given time and able to be exposed to a message. "We seem to feel comfortable it passes the sniff test," CEO Reggie Bradford said.

How many fans a brand has is also a factor in calculating click-through rate -- it's the total number of clicks on a particular post divided by number of fans who would have seen it, a number that's adjusted to take into consideration that not every fan is on Facebook all day long.

Mr. Bradford explained: "If a site has 100 fans and your wall post gets five clicks, that's a 5% CTR. But if you assume only about 20% of those folks actually saw the post, it's really a 20% click-through rate." That's better than the click-through rate of the average e-mail campaign, he said, and certainly better than the rate for an online ad. It also doesn't count how many people commented on the post or said they liked it but didn't click through.

Of course, the more of the U.S. Facebook population that's on the site at any given time, increasing the number of potential exposures to a wall post, the lower the click-through rate potentially gets. Here's the breakdown, according to Vitrue's calculations, based on Quantcast data indicating that 90.8 million U.S. users visited the site in June 2009 for a total of 2.9 billion visits -- an average of 32 per person:

 

• With the assumption that one-twelfth of the total U.S. Facebook audience is on the site at a given time, Vitrue data show a click-through rate of 6.49%.
• With the assumption of one-eighth of the audience is on the site, Vitrue data show a click-through rate of 4.32%.
• With the assumption of one-fourth of the audience is on the site, Vitrue data show a click-through rate of 2.12%.

Vitrue also broke down the clicks by demo -- age and gender. (Consider that younger demos are arguably overrepresented on Facebook):

• 13 to 17: 40%
• 18 to 24: 30%
• 25 to 34: 14%
• 35 to 44: 10%
• 45 to 54: 4%
• 55-plus: 2%

• Female: 56%
• Male: 44%

Of course, this doesn't mean marketers should go hog wild posting to their Facebook walls -- nothing's probably quicker to lose fans than a flood of marketing messages in a place where they're probably not to keen to see those anyway. As Michael Donnelly, group director of worldwide interactive marketing at Coca-Cola Co., which counts 3.6 million Facebook fans, put it to me in an interview yesterday: "They've fanned the Coca-Cola brand; they haven't opted in to be blasted with advertising."

What do you think about the click-through rates in wall posts? Do you run a brand-focused Facebook page? How do you communicate with your fans? Let us know in the comments.

11 Comments

 

  By alyosha19 | Marina del Rey, CA August 13, 2009 12:24:47 pm:

Our agency manages a brand page with a rapidly, growing Facebook presence. What we have seen is that the paid media click through rate is better (though not outstanding) than the online media norm, it's the organic traffic and interaction rate which is outstanding. People are discovering our page through the Newsfeed, either by their friends joining, commenting, or liking the page.

We have reached a level of interaction that is a balance between our promotional posts, brand posts, and commenting back to our fans. What we are happy about is that consumers are now replying to other consumer comments, in a positive, friendly way. Overall, we are watching the conversation very closely on Facebook to keep our finger on the pulse and adjust our messaging accordingly.

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  By joeldavis | london August 13, 2009 12:46:57 pm:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

We have completed some click rate research on social media sites. We are finding the CTR is highly impressive. The results are published on http://www.agency2.co.uk/resources/

Joel
agency:2 The Social Media Agency

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  By lazerow | NY, NY August 13, 2009 02:15:22 pm:

Hi Abbey!

It's really too early to tell what the actual CTR is. However, the engagement on Facebook Pages and Twitter is THROUGH THE ROOF and any company that is not actively trying to figure out how to create an awesome Facebook Page and Twitter voice that engages consumers is, frankly, being grossly negligent.

We run FB Pages for tons of clients. One of the recent posts by our client Bud Light on their fan page received close to 4000 RESPONSES out of 147,000 fans. So that's close to a 2.5% ENGAGEMENT rate. That's not click through. That's people actually responding! Frankly, I think the numbers in your story are low based on waht we are seeing. (And, for the record, those 4000 people are connected to more than 400,000 people, who saw their response to Bud Light!)

This engagement between brands and consumers on Twitter, Facebook and other social nets is real today and every company needs to figure out how to leverage the social nets.

You can see some of this in action at these awesome, engaging Facebook Pages for several Buddy Media clients here:

Bud Light: http://www.facebook.com/budlight
Atlantis: http://www.facebook.com/atlantis
JCrew: http://www.facebook.com/jcrew

Best,

Michael Lazerow
CEO, Buddy Media (http://www.buddymedia.com)

Anyone who wants to talk further about pages can email me, DM me, FB me. As you can see, I'm excited about this space right now.

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  By vandegri6 | SANTA MONICA, CA August 13, 2009 02:58:51 pm:

Having built and run many Facebook initiatives for major brands and agencies (our www.facebook.com/dippindots has over 865,000 fans for example), we carefully track ROI metrics using a variety of proprietary tools.

We routinely see 10,000+ responses to our interactive polls, printable coupons, etc. -- and all within 24 hours. For our posts, we get hundreds of responses within minutes. All this "fans" the growth of the base and buzz around the products.

Brands and agencies are wise to be moving money toward social. We're here to help...

Van Vandegrift
Executive Producer
www.matrixxpictures.com
van.vandegrift [at] matrixxpictures.com

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  By AkashPai | CUPERTINO, CA August 13, 2009 04:15:00 pm:

Michael and Abbey, I completely agree with you.
On another note, the consumer engagement is at a different level with social media outlets. CTR aside, we need to figure out better measurement metrics which take into account a user's engagement vs. clicks. CTR are for search and display ads, socia media needs better metrics. I'm sure you must have seen IAB's social media metric paper, it was good start but in my opinion still tied to the old way of measurement. Search and display will see a downturn in next 2-3 years (in my opinion). Would love to get your views as well.

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  By salem | Canberra, NA August 14, 2009 02:44:37 am:

Umm...

"If a site has 100 fans and your wall post gets five clicks, that's a 5% CTR. But if you assume only about 20% of those folks actually saw the post, it's really a 20% click-through rate."

20% of 100 fans see the post. That's 20 people. 5 of those click on the link. That's 5 out of 20, or 25%. Not 20%.

So either I am misunderstanding what a click-through rate is, or he sucks at maths.

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  By targeted | sofia August 14, 2009 02:49:33 am:

"Mr. Bradford explained: "If a site has 100 fans and your wall post gets five clicks, that's a 5% CTR. But if you assume only about 20% of those folks actually saw the post, it's really a 20% click-through rate."

This statement is so redicilous, i'm stunned.

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  By salem | Canberra, NA August 14, 2009 03:10:48 am:

It's ok, redicilous isn't even a word.

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  By SkylarB | USA, WA August 15, 2009 04:19:50 am:

Indeed, advertising is the major cause on how a company earns. One of their way in promoting a company's new product is Internet marketing. Since more people are joining the social networking site, and it's also a great place to advertise for a business – it's free advertising space, and social networks have become a marketing hotbed over the last few years. There are precious few opportunities for a business to have access to so many potential customers, which can be a great way to build customer rapport, as long as you aren't spamming anyone – customers hate that. And since the website is free to sign up for, a business can start advertising on Facebook without needing payday loans to start an ad campaign. Follow the link to read more about Facebook advertising: http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/08/08/facebook-sells-set-network/

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  By KetaKeta | Tel Aviv August 17, 2009 04:23:29 am:

We find that CTR's on social ads are usually lower than average, but good content on Fan Pages brings a higher than average response.

I like Nine West's initiatives on their fan page- they frequently post open-ended questions for fashion opinion and likes and dislikes from their fans. Here's their page: www.facebook.com/ninewest

We ran a FB campaign for LastMinuteTravel.com last year to communicate with participants of a contest. This initiative was very successful. LastMinuteTravel.com is now using the page for their latest campaign, Staycations Suck, and they've received some really nice attention for it. here's their page: www.facebook.com/LastMinuteTravel.

We love tweeting about exceptional Facebook and Twitter campaigns. Follow us @ketaketa.

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  By bennyradjasa | New york, NY August 20, 2009 10:42:13 am:

Hi Abbey, one question we need to ask our self, are these data statically significant. If so what is the lift in the KPI vs Cost? This now created a new angle what really are the true cost of acquiring engagement. Some people will debate the engagement quality of the click coming from banners, search, Facebook page, and etc. Rightfully so, each of these click source have different value to it, and the value of each source differ from brand to brand. However we can start with a common denominator to partially answer this, which is the CPC of such clicks.
So we should ask our self how much it costs to get clicks from Facebook pages and let say from banner display and or SEM. If you put it in such a filter, then most people will realized that most of these Facebook pages are not very efficient. The other side of the argument to this is that some brands do want to engage marketing in the groundswell, and if done correctly such activity ROI will be positive, if there are enough people engaging in it.

Regards,
Benny Radjasa

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more insight on why social media are a different medium

The following is also my Adage column this week

The Two Faces of Facebook

I spend a lot of time gazing into a crystal ball that I know is going to be cloudy half the time. Lately I have been pondering Facebook's future.

Facebook is clearly on a roll and is knocking on Google's door as the biggest site on the web. Will it continue to dominate or see its lead slip? Here are two potential outcomes.

The Google Scenario

In the more rosy picture Facebook remains the disrupter. It transforms how we use the web.

Just as search changed our expectations that everything we want to know is accessible if we Google it, Facebook is the inverse. If information is important, it will find us through our friends and their friends and so on. We don't have to Google it.

'Trends from friends' is as tranformative as search. The more we use Facebook and the more we create and connect there, the smarter it gets in realizing what we need and when. We don't have to ask.

The opportunity cost of switching to an alternative is simply too great. This is why millions remain wih the same IM network they first tried years ago.

Facebook, like Google, groks data. And they know how to study and use it to make the experience and value grow with every status update, photo, connection and interaction. Once they get serious about search - and consumers see the value in using it for finding curated information - Facebook's value and power could grow.

The AOL Scenario

It's hard to believe but ten years ago AOL was once dominant. It was a hit with advertisers. Publishers paid for position and built grand palaces. It was the place to be. It was also a walled garden. Sound familliar? This begs the question: could Facebook follow the same path? Possibly.

Through continuous innovation Facebook is trying not to become AOL. That's the smart play. However each successive update has irked consumers. The revamped news feed, which rolled out last week, is just the latest.

So far we keep coming back; but you have to wonder if a social network has nine lives. It's possible fickle consumers will eventually migrate elsewhere.

Where might they turn? Just as with AOL they'll go everywhere. The entire web is becoming social. Facebook Connect is a play to make this happen on their terms. However this is where Google, Yahoo and other stalwarts could shine. They already control millions of IM and email address books and have lots of data

So which mask wil Facebook don - Google's or AOLs? My bet right now is Google's.

with facebook's changes this weekend to its interface and now this effort from the mozilla crew, it's clear the rush is on to develop a product/service that will consolidate all our communications streams

When selecting the sites  to target in your social media marketing efforts, it’s easy to fall into the trap of just going after big fish like Facebook and Twitter, simply because they’re more popular.  But smaller, lesser-known social media sites can be huge winners, especially if they cater to a very specific topic or niche audience.  For almost any given topic, you can bet there’s a social media site of some sort dedicated to it, even if it’s just a forum or message board.  What’s more important than getting your message in front of the most eyeballs?  Getting your message in front of eyeballs that are attached to the people who would be most interested in what you’re selling!

with all the noise going on about myspace's demise, refreshing to hear an  alternative pov

facebook gets a taste of its own medicine as popular photo-sharing site flickr adds tagging. guess they saw facebook "innovating" with a number of twitter features and figured good for the goose etc.

seriously though, this raised the same concerns in my mind that image tagging did in facebook. what if some old girlfriend decided to post the "artistic" photos we took one drunken night senior year? at least in the photo above, you can't tell it's grain punch and peyote in the styrofoam cups.

flickr is quick to reassure, stating they have adequate protections in place to satisfy the most privacy-obsessed. "people not on flickr cannot be tagged without their permission." I envision a mysterious apparition knocking on windows late at night, but it's probably something more mundane like an email. as with facebook, if you remove your tag from a photo, no one, even the image owner, can put it back (not sure if they can't retag with a demeaning sobriquet you hoped they had forgotten, but let's hope for the best) and, as on facebook, you can mandate that you cannot be tagged in any photos.

hey, maybe this is a strategy to get people who don't use or care about flickr to care about and use it, if only to keep evidence of indiscretion at bay

If you're on flickr but don't use it much (like me), what then? will I be forced to wait until one of my infrequent logins to learn why my hipper, flickr-ati friends have been hiding smiles?

I will investigate further and report back. stay tuned.

ps - thanks to lifehacker for the heads up

Foursquare

is a company with all of four employees. Yes, they just hired their fourth, we’ve learned (hello, Nathan Folkman

, formerly of Betaworks

, where he worked on Bit.ly

). And yes, that’s a fitting number. You might think that a company that recently closed some funding would ramp up hiring a little faster, but the truth is that they don’t have to. Why? Because their users are already doing quite a bit of work to expand and improve the service.

You see, some users of Foursquare that are very active earn the label “Superuser.” These are users with privileges that allow them to edit certain aspects of the site, which I’ll get into below. Full disclosure: I’m one of them, but only because I use the service so often. But I’m also only a “Superuser! – Level 1.” Today, the service started upgrading a very select group of users to the new “Superuser! – Level 2″ distinction. In total, less than 1% (0.7% to be exact) of Foursquare’s user base received that distinction.

The plan is to eventually have three levels of Superusers, but right now, there are only these two, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley

tells us. Level 1 users are able to edit venues (including names and cross streets), mark places as “closed,” and note duplicates. These new Level 2 users are able to merge venues themselves when there are duplicates. Eventually, Level 3 is likely to contain elements such as adding badges (rewards you get for certain check-in patterns), and policing other users, Crowley says.

But the Superuser functionality is more than just for show, or a small game within the game. It’s actually helping Foursquare in a meaningful way. Shortly after the group of users got upgraded to Level 2 today, Crowley noted that, “we had some 2000+ duplicate venues in the system 30 mins ago. We’re [now] down to 400.” He followed up shortly after that noting, “it took less than 2 hours for users to go thru 90% of our merge queue.”

Those are some very impressive results, and suggest that Foursquare has a community that may be able to self-police itself like Wikipedia does. If that’s the case, the company can focus less on hiring people do to the tedious stuff, and more time building new features and expanding to new cities.

It also will give them more time to work on potential business deals, which will eventually make the site money.

Speaking of that, there’s a pretty nifty one in Las Vegas this week if you happen to be there: If you’re over 21, stop by the Planet Hollywood Hotel for a free shot at Koi Restaurant. You simply need to check in there to get it.

more about why foursquare is poised for greatness. I wrote about foursquare yesterday http://btrandolph.com/2009/10/foursquare-com-how-soon-is-now/

foursquare.com: how soon is now?

strange and wonderful things happened this past friday night. I indulged in a rare upscale treat. I qualified for a meaningless award. and I saw evidence that the future of marketing as I envision it is coming to pass.

strange

I was signed up to attend an  event with gary vaynerchuk in boston. I got into town early and visited a number of establishments (you’ll see why this matters in a sec).  I enjoyed a libation with gradon tripp and alicia staley before we headed over.  my enjoyment of the beverage and the company was not surprising – the venue was. I don’t recall if it was gradon or @stales who suggested the four seasons, but soon there we were, backpacks and hoodies and all. my sentiments are best captured in my foursquare check-in:

let me note that this was not a smear on the beer – I had in fact ordered non-alcoholic (ironic nomenclature there) beer. a 2009  clausthaler: highly recommended. but I digress.

also strange

I refer above to my foursquare check-in. for those of you not familiar with it,  foursquare.com is a silly site whose users log in from all the places they visit.  but how silly is it really? look closer, my pretties…

 larger image click here

log ins are assigned a certain number of points, which are useless except for bragging rights with other users. as shown in the image above, you get to be mayor of a venue on foursquare when you are the most frequent visitor. also useless, but it does tend to make one check in more. strange things #2: I was awarded the ‘oversharer’ badge on friday for ten checkins in 24 hours, a new personal best. among the foursquare-ati, ten is what they get in by lunchtime. popular spots might change mayors a few times a day, encouraging repeat visits. so maybe not so silly. but that’s just the start.

users are encouraged to enter  tips about the places they check in – a favorite entree or section of the bar, for example. this evening I saw a tweet from  jeremiah owyang saying that after checking in on foursquare,  he received an offer for a discount nearby. he observes that “soon it will add social data: ‘your friends like this place.’”

wonderful

well, guess what – soon is now. after checking in at the four seasons, foursquare.com flashed up a confirmation, along with (trumpets please) a message which unfortunately I had no way to capture on my not-so-smartphone. It said (as near as I can recall)

since you’re so close, you should stop by pj chang’s – some of your friends are there now. [name of friend] recommends the chocolate cake [friend's comment followed praising the dessert and restaurant].

oh. my. god. it’s the rapture.

I freaked. I showed it to my friends. I guess they had received similar messages, because their reaction was pretty blasé. however, seeing jeremiah’s tweet made me realize that hey, maybe foursquare is just starting to leverage the power of real time, geo-tagged data.

oh. my. god.

just so freaking cool.

stay tuned.

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By btrandolph – October 19, 2009

Edit

here's an excerpt from a blog post by mark evans about blogworld expo, going on this week:

Twitter is sexy and Facebook now has more than 300 million registered users. But what about blogging? Blogging isn’t sexy anymore and it is being assailed as a passing fancy, especially by the mainstream media.

The truth, however, is the blogosphere is doing just fine: the number of blogs, blog posts and people reading blogs continues to grow. Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to launch blogs as part of its mad scramble to embrace the social Web.

What became obvious during BlogWorld Expo is that blogging is the solid citizen of the social Web, while Twitter and Facebook are the wild children. Another reality is that Twitter and Facebook are, in many cases, complementary tools used by bloggers rather than tools that replace blogging.

Before anyone writes off blogs, think again.

More: Here’s an audio clip from social media maven Robert Scoble on whether blogging during tech conferences such as BlogWorld Expo is dead.

not sure about the claimed attacks on blogging by "the mainstream media" that mark assails here. maybe the canadian press has a secret vendetta not shared by their american counterparts?

in addition, is it really surprising that a meeting called "blogworld" would put blogs at the center of the social media universe (talking pre-galilean here of course)? blogs are content repositories and as such, are essential to any inbound marketing strategy. but facebook is the public face of the social web - to call it a "wild child" seems disingenuous.

As marketers, this has become an interesting new challenge. We used to play the role of content creator ourselves. But with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube established as important communications channels, we’ve taken on a larger role of content aggregator and distributor, and even more important, content instigator.

I may be going down the road of coining yet another term for something someone has already named, but I think this is an important distinction to make. In order to get the right content in the right place with the right voice at the right time, we’ve got to have authenticity. And authenticity comes from having the actual person write, record, perform etc. Or as close to that as possible. We spend a lot of time worrying about what we’re going to create (a video, a podcast, a blog post, a newsletter article??)  and where we’re going to put it (on the website, on the blog, on youtube, on twitter, on facebook, everywhere??)

great post from Kate Brodock that highlights a new role for marketers - that of noodge (sp, trudy?. "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on tv" won't fly in the age of content marketing - to pull in and retain a target audience means establishing a system to create and deliver useful content, not spin. the marketing person can serve as reporter, but the copy has to come from somewhere...