IBM’s Black Friday report says Twitter delivered 0 percent of referral traffic and Facebook sent just 0.68 percent. As a whole, all major social networks sent just 0.34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, down 35 percent from 2011.
Twitter and Facebook usually aren’t the last click before an ecommerce buy, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t inspire or influence the purchase. Yet IBM’s Black Friday report says Twitter delivered 0 percent of referral traffic and Facebook sent just 0.68 percent. To lure advertisers and ecommerce integrations, they have to show its not Google driving every sale.
Last year IBM said Twitter generated 0.02 percent of traffic, but now the microblogging platform supposedly drove no measurable amount of traffic. If you factored in downstream visits and conversions, that percentage might not be huge, but I doubt it’s zero. As a whole IBM says social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube generated 0.34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, down 35 percent from 2011. The lack of sales attribution, especially for paid ads, is a problem for the entire industry.
[One major caveat: IBM did not readily disclose the methodology for this study, so numbers should be taken with heavy salt, and this article isn't trying to say Twitter doesn't drive referral traffic or influence purchases. Twitter's role in demand generation is very important, but the issue is tracking this to show businesses they get a return on their ads and effort spent on the social network.]
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These last few months, Facebook has been making a major push to get credited for downstream purchases. It’s rolled out both a self-serve User ID matching system and cookie-dropping ads.These let advertisers tell if someone who bought something on their site saw an ad for them on Facebook in the previous weeks or months – not just if an ad click-through led straight to the shopping cart.
However, these don’t tally purchases inspired by owned (Page posts) or earned (word of mouth) media on Facebook. Those are huge. Facebook tells me the top 25 most talked about Pages this week were all retailers. Walmart, Toys’R'Us, and Macy’s had the most PTAT (Likes/comments/shares). User mentions of the word “shopping” spiked 586 percent last week, and many of those probably cited where people were shopping.
That’s a ton of viral marketing that could be driving downstream conversions but isn’t being counted. Facebook may need to extend these attribution systems so ecommerce sites can tell whether a buyer is one of their fans, saw a particular post promoting what they bought, or saw a link to the product that was shared by a friend.
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Twitter seems to be way behind on this. I haven’t heard of any downstream conversion attribution systems connected to Twitter accounts or ads. Sure, ecommerce sites can tell if someone clicked straight to their site from one of their Promoted Tweets. But what if minutes, hours, or days later they remember the ad or account, search for it on Google, and end up making a purchase?
Twitter has confirmed with me that it doesn’t have any downstream conversion tracking right now, which means it isn’t getting the credit it deserves. I think correcting that will be a big focus for Twitter in 2013.
It’s critical that these social networks beef up their attribution systems because advertisers only want to plop down their dollars where they can see clear return on investment. If you spend $50,000 on Twitter ads, but all your holiday sales come from Google, you might shift that budget to search ads.
Alternatively, if Facebook and Twitter really push their attribution systems, they could claim credit for driving purchases they only lightly influenced, or for delivering buyers that didn’t even notice they saw an ad for what they bought. That might not be the most honest business tactic, but right now search engines are scoring touchdowns without giving credit to who threw the ball.
COMMENTARY: I also find IBM's Black Friday Report 2012 hard to swallow for the same reasons the report was criticized above. With internet consumers spending more time online and on social networks, it's difficult to fathom that they are not clicking links on Facebook updates or Twitter Tweets that ultimately result in a sale. The benefits to the advertisers from earned media cannot be under-emphasized. It's free advertising, so any sales from clickthroughs are "cream." However, for fan and follower engagement, you cannot beat Facebook and Twitter for spreading brand messages via free content.
If you are Apple, IBM's Black Friday Report 2012 has some good news for you.
"The iPad generated more traffic than any other tablet or smartphone, reaching nearly 10 percent of online shopping. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and Android 5.5 percent. The iPad dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes & Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent."
Apple's devices have a 65% chunk of the mobile Web browsing market share, with Android-based mobile devices accounting for just 20%. This indicates that, while Android remains a popular choice, Android users aren't using their devices to browse the web as much as iOS users.
The report was compiled as part of IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative by the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark. It found that US shoppers took advantage of early promotions driving a 17.4 percent increase in online sales during Thanksgiving Day which set the stage for 20.7 percent growth on Black Friday.
The biggest surge, according to IBM, came from consumers using mobile devices, with sales reaching 16.3 percent led by the iPad.
IBM's Digital Analytics Benchmark compiled the data using a cloud-based analytics platform that tracks more than a million e-commerce transactions per day and analyzes terabytes of raw data from 500 retailers across the US.
The popularity of the iPad and iPhone was confirmed last week by a report from Nielsen which found that 48 percent of children aged between 6-12 wanted an iPad for Christmas - more than any other tablet, smartphone, computer or video game device.
More good news for Apple: Nielsen also found that 6 percent of children wanted the new iPad Mini, 36 percent wanted the iPod Touch and 33 percent wanted the latest iPhone.
IBM's Black Friday 2012 report also showed a decline of social referrals for online shopping. In 2011, social sites accounted for 0.92 percent of site traffic and 0.53 percent of sales which this year fell to 0.81 percent for traffic referral and 0.34% sales.
IBM has produced the infographic below to represent its findings:
IBM Holiday Benchmark Infographic BF2012
Courtesy of an article dated November 26, 2012 appearing in TechCrunch and an article dated November 27, 2012 appearing in Mobile&Apps
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