Since Facebook went public, both its revenues and advertising plans have been compromised. There are many voices that question the real effectiveness of the advertising of this social network. However, it seems that users like to interact more with the free content offered by the brands than with the ads they pay, something that could become an obstacle for the social network.
According to the data recorded by the company Greenlight in its report “Search and Social Media Survey 2011-2012” in January, 44% of Internet users around the world said they never clicked on ads or stories. sponsored Facebook, while 31% claimed to do so rarely, 10% often and 3% on a regular basis.
However, when we talk about the contents of the companies the thing changes and the percentage of users who never click on them decreases to 17%, 37% assures to do it rarely, 26% often and 9% in a way regular.
“Choose your favorites” or “Pick your favorites”, application in which users can choose a certain number of items from a list as their favorites, is the most popular content among users, with 39% of votes according to a survey conducted in April by Wildfire. 32% share contests or quizzes, 29% trivial questions and 26% truncheons or lotteries. Wildfire also recorded how 82% of users who clicked on a friend’s update about a quiz or quiz game went to the page and also answered it.
This interaction with the contents of the brands is positive for companies but does not require an advertising investment or pay money to the social network to gain visibility. In February this year Facebook reported that each week only 16% of brand fans saw their updates. With the idea of increasing that percentage, Facebook launched “Reach generator”, an application that guaranteed that 50% of fans would see brand updates every week. The application therefore, despite helping brands in part, also forces companies to invest more money in the social network before committing to a content strategy planned to achieve a greater impact among users without the need to add more expenses to your actions.