Adobe Q1 report: clickthrough rate up, cost per click down

Adobe, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, released Monday night its Q1 2014 Social Intelligence Report, showing that Facebook’s ad performance has kept chugging along — especially on Fridays.

Among Adobe’s clients, cost-per-click (CPC) is down 2 percent year-over-year and 11 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clickthrough rate (CTR) rose 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. Facebook ad clicks overall were increased by 70 percent YoY and 48 percent QoQ. Impressions are up 40 percent YoY and 41 percent QoQ.

Joe Martin, a Senior Analyst for Adobe Digital Index, talked with Inside Facebook about Facebook’s ads performance in the first quarter of the year:

A lot of the Facebook changes are around making sure people see the content they want to see. Even though that’s making brands possibly pay for more impressions than they were before, it’s keeping News Feeds clean of excessive brand posts. If I like 100 brands, and I saw every post, that’s all I’d ever see on my News Feed. So Facebook is really rewarding people for original content, media-rich content and people are responding with some higher engagement rates.

Other findings from Adobe’s report:

• Comments on ad posts are up 16 percent YoY and 40 percent QoQ; likes are down 4 percent YoY and shares are up 2 percent.


• Engagement on video is up 25 percent YoY and 58 percent QoQ, showing that auto-play videos haven’t been as toxic as feared.


• Video plays are up 785 percent YoY and 134 percent QoQ after auto-play videos were implemented in Q4.


• Nearly 1/4 of all video plays on Facebook happen on Fridays.


• Posts with images still gain the most engagement, though the percentage of engagement for photo, link and text posts are all down YoY.


• Posts with links are up 77 percent YoY and 167 percent QoQ, as Facebook has made great strides in making link posts more visual.


• Most impressions in Q1 came on a Friday, with 15.7 percent of all impressions.


• Sunday is the least likely day to receive a comment on a post.


• Facebook referred revenue per visit is up 11 percent year-over-year and 2 percent quarter-over-quarter.


• Facebook produces 75 percent of traffic to retail sites, up 2 percent year-over-year and 13 percent quarter-over-quarter.


• Facebook refers 52 percent of social traffic to B2B high tech sites, up 34 percent year-over-year.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Source: Inside Facebook

Adobe Q1 report: clickthrough rate up, cost per click down