Adobe’s just-released Social Media Intelligence Report analyzing paid, earned and owned social media trends for the first quarter of 2014 shows that Facebook’s ad business continued to grow with click-through rate and ad impressions increasing by double-digits quarter-over-quarter, 20 percent and 41 percent respectively.
Adobe’s report is based on 260 billion Facebook ad impressions, 226 billion Facebook post impressions, 17 billion referred visits from social networking sites, and seven billion brand post interactions including comments, likes and shares. The paid social data used in the report was pulled from aggregated Adobe Marketing Cloud data.
Paid social media trends show Facebook ad clicks and impressions are on the rise with clicks 
continuing to outpace impressions. Facebook’s ad clicks increased 70 percent year-over-year (YoY) and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), with ad impressions up 40 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Facebook’s ad CTR jumped 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. However, Facebook’s cost per click (CPC) dipped two percent YoY and 11 percent QoQ following a strong holiday season.
Earned social trends show that brand posts with embedded video gained traction in Q1 – with 58 percent more engagement QoQ and 25 percent growth YoY. Facebook video plays increased 785 percent YoY and 134 percent 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 percent QoQ and 77 percent YoY.
“Social media continued to grow even after a strong holiday quarter and the seasonal slowdown expected in Q1,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index. “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.”
Click here to check out Adobe’s full Q1 Social Intelligence Report.
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