Facebook Newsfeed 98x higher CTR than Ticker

We analyzed 8 Facebook apps that we admin to see how the Ticker and Newsfeed compare in driving traffic to apps. Looking at the data in 2 different ways shows that the Facebook Newsfeed is about 100x more effective in driving traffic than Ticker.

Our data set is 8 different apps totalling 67,000 installs over a 30 day period.

Comparing CTR

CTR (click through rate) shows how often people click on stories they see in feeds, so the calcuation is CTR = Clicks/Impressions. We see an average click rate of 0.03% for Ticker and 2.94% for Newsfeed. Newsfeed has 98x higher CTR than Ticker.

Comparing Total Referral Traffic

We then analyzed how much traffic was sent from Newsfeed and Ticker. We totalled up all the Story Clicks for all apps. During the 30 day period, Ticker gave 562 clicks and Newsfeed gave 64,017. Newsfeed is sending 114x more traffic than Ticker.

Notes

The apps we analyzed are not Open Graph enabled, so the only ticker stories they create are “App Used” stories, like this:

Stories like “Chris read Lindsay Lohan arrested!” could receive higher click rates. Additionally, “App Used” stories will only appear in the “Apps Ticker” which is shown while users are in the App Canvas. Open Graph created stories would appear on Facebook.com. Once we have an app with significant Open Graph stories created, we’ll do an analysis on this too.

cateogories: Analysis, Blog, data, Facebook, Uncategorized, Virality