Comscore Report – Power of Like

Executive summary

The article is based in association between comScore and Facebook. The research, examines the nature of the reach and frequency of branded content on Facebook, is largely based on May 2011 findings from comScore Social Essentials™, but also includes insights from Facebook’s internal analytics platform.

5 Key Findings

1. The Newsfeed is the primary location where branded content is consumed. Users are 40-150 times more likely to consume branded content in the Newsfeed than to visit the Fan Page itself.
2. Brands focusing on acquiring and engaging Fans it benefits from a significant secondary effect – exposure among Friends of Fans that often surpasses reach among Fans. It is 34 times larger, on average, for the top 100 brand pages and 81x for lesser brands
3. In May 2011, 27 percent of engagement on Facebook.com occurred on the homepage and Newsfeed, followed by profile viewing (21 percent), photo viewing (17 percent) and usage of apps and tools (10 percent).
4. A Facebook analysis indicates that, on average, 16 percent of Fans are reached by branded content by a brand that posts five out of seven days.
5. A given status update from a user will result in approximately 12 percent reach among their Friends, according to a Facebook analysis.

Industry-wise analysis

To understand the difference 3 companies were taken for analysis – Starbucks, Southwest and Bing

Starbucks

To understand differences in purchase patterns among the Fans and Friends segments, comScore analyzed Starbucks customers’ in-store purchase patterns. The analysis, which examined in-store purchase behaviour during May 2011, revealed that Starbucks Fans & Friends of Fans spent 8 percent more and transacted 11 percent more frequently than the average Internet user who transacted at Starbucks.

To understand the incremental value of the published content, this research technique can be used to identify Starbucks Fans and Friends of Fans who have received branded content, and evaluate their behaviour over time

Southwest

The results indicated substantially higher visitation rates among Fans and Friends of Fans. While 2.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience visited Southwest.com in May 2011, 12.4 percent of exposed Southwest Facebook Fans visited the site, nearly 5 times the total Internet average. Perhaps even more dramatically, 7.1 percent of exposed Southwest Friends of Fans visited Southwest.com, more than 2.5 times the rate among the total Internet population. These results suggest that exposure to socially influenced brand messages might be persuasive in driving brand engagement.

Differences in site visitation rates can be tied to conversion to help quantify the value of Fans and Friends of Fans.

Bing

The results again indicated higher engagement across the board among the Fans and Friends of Fans segments. Overall, Bing Fans conducted 68 percent more searches on Bing than the average Bing searcher (40.9 vs. 24.3) while Friends of Fans conducted 27 percent more searches (30.8 vs. 24.3). Fans and Friends also exhibited higher search engagement in terms of the number of searches per session, searches per usage day, and number of search usage days. In each case, Bing Fans demonstrated significantly higher engagement than the Friends of Fans segment.

This dynamic illustrates the importance of the Fan and Friend segments to Microsoft, since their association with the Bing brand corresponds directly with Microsoft’s ability to monetize search behaviour.

Some statistics in detail

Within Facebook, the largest portion of users’ time is spent on the individual’s homepage which features the Newsfeed. In May 2011, 27 percent of engagement on Facebook.com occurred on the homepage and Newsfeed, followed by profile viewing (21 percent), photo viewing (17 percent) and usage of apps and tools (10 percent). (Source: comScore)

A Facebook analysis suggests that each incremental day of publishing branded content from the Facebook Page increases the reach among Fans by approximately 2.5 percent. Of course, brands must also take care to ensure that the content and frequency of publishing aligns with the expectations of their Fan base, and does not result in annoyed or disengaged Fans.

Conclusion

1. A measurement approach that focuses on reach and frequency within audience types (for example, Fans and Friends of Fans) can lead to a dramatically better understanding of how and where brand messages are reaching consumers.
2. Marketers can also better place their social media strategy within the broader framework of their marketing objectives for key consumer segments.
3. The findings in this article may be of interest to brand marketers to consider their realization of the “value of a Fan” on Facebook.
4. In addition to understanding the short and long term reach of social media brand impressions to Fans, this approach’s ability to determine reach among the largely untapped Friends of Fans audience may be important in helping brands to achieve their marketing goals on Facebook — and beyond.