Social Media Is Driving Record Revenue for Retailers: Adobe

Social Media Is Driving Record Revenue for Retailers: Adobe

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San Jose, CA—If you still believe that social media shouldn’t play a large part in your marketing strategy, Adobe’s recently released Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence Report would indicate otherwise. The study, which analyzed paid, earned and owned social media trends, found that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr drove an “unprecedented amount of qualified traffic to retail sites in Q4 with revenue per visit (RPV) increasing across social channels.” Tumblr’s RPV rose 340% year-over-year (YoY), Pinterest’s 244%, Twitter’s 131% and Facebook’s 72%, according to the findings.

The data in the Adobe Digital Index report also confirms that Facebook is facing increased competition, with share of referred visits to retail sites growing the fastest YoY for Twitter and Pinterest, 125% and 89%, respectively.

The analysis is based on aggregated and anonymous data from retail, media, entertainment and travel sites between Q4 2012 and Q4 2013, including 240 billion Facebook ad impressions, more than 1.5 billion Facebook posts, 500 million unique visitors to social networking sites, and 6.3 billion social engagements on Facebook, including comments, shares and likes. Paid social data is derived from Adobe Marketing Cloud data.

“We expect Facebook’s competitors to aggressively drive market share growth in 2014 by adding innovative paid media capabilities,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index, Adobe. “Optimizing campaign spending across social channels and seeking a balance between CPCs and CPMs to drive ROI will become even more important.”

Gaffney noted additional key findings include:
•    Paid Social Trends: Facebook ads are increasingly attractive to brand marketers due to growing consumer engagement. Its ad click through rate (CTR) is up 365% YoY and Facebook cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) increased 437% YoY. The social network's ad click volume is up 125%.
•    Owned Social Trends: Revenue per visit reached an all-time high across all social media channels, especially during the holiday season, with 84% quarter-over-quarter gains for Twitter, 69% for Pinterest, 38% for Tumblr and 31% for Facebook. Facebook is still referring the most traffic, but Pinterest overtook Facebook for referring revenue in Q4 in the UK and is expected to surpass Facebook’s RPV in the U.S. this year as well.
•    Earned Social Trends: Social engagement with brand posts on Facebook rose 180% YoY and brand post impressions are up 150% YoY. Brand posts with images produced a 650% higher engagement rate than regular text posts (up 10%), while posts with links, text or video yielded less engagement. adobe.com

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