Engagement on media and publisher content on Facebook has nearly doubled in the last year, while promoted (paid) posts only take up 3% of an average user’s newsfeed, according to new research.
The study, from Socialbakers, looks at what, where, and how user and branded content appears in the Facebook News Feed on desktop.
Among other points, the research revealed that 24 – 29% of the typical News Feed is Page content and 3% of the typical feed is promoted content. The rest is taken up by user (friend) posts).
“Our research is the first to truly take a data-driven approach in understanding how the Facebook News Feed functions for both users and marketers,” said Jan Rezab, Founder and Chairman of Socialbakers. “These new insights show us that social media is still at the very beginning stages of its potential, and there is a huge opportunity for social moving forward.”
Posts by Friends vs. Pages & Promoted Posts: Taking into account that mobile and desktop feeds are similar in terms of content, 24 – 29% of posts on the typical Facebook News Feed are posts from Pages, including Pages of companies, celebrities, public figures, and organizations. 10% of those Page posts are sponsored, meaning that about 3% of the typical News Feed is sponsored content. The fewer Pages a user Likes, the higher the share of Page posts delivered to them will be sponsored, and vice versa.
Categories: Facebook is an increasingly prominent platform for media and news. Content from media and publisher Pages has seen a huge increase in engagement over the past two years; while in June 2013 brands’ content was receiving more interactions (likes, comments, and shares) on Facebook than media organizations’ content, the media industry is now receiving about 3 times more interactions on their content as compared to all brands.
Order of Posts: Researching post order on the News Feed unveiled some interesting findings, especially when it comes to the nature of the second post on the feed. If the second post on your News Feed is a Page post, there’s a 46% chance that it was promoted. Later in the feed, according to our data, roughly 1 in every 5 posts is a Page post. In addition, video posts by Pages throughout the News Feed appear to be equally spread.
Desktop Session Length: In 49% of News Feed sessions, users viewed 4 posts before exiting, whereas 15% of sessions lasted over 20 posts. While the average session lasts 12 posts, the median session lasts 5 posts.
The Socialbakers News Feed study was based on activity from over 900 users on over 23,000 Facebook desktop sessions.
Socialbakers has rolled out a number of new product integrations, including News Feed Pulse, Ads in Socialbakers Analytics and Listening in Socialbakers Analytics.