Study of 6.5 million Facebook shares from 500 publishers makes it possible for publishers to compare CTRs with their peers
London, UK – June 22, 2021: Publishers across all verticals, countries and publication types record an average click-through rate (CTR) of 2.5% on organic Facebook posts, reveals new research published today by Echobox, the AI-powered social publishing platform. The study is believed to be the first to measure organic Facebook post performance across the global publishing industry.
For this analysis, Echobox studied 6.5 million Facebook shares from 500 publishers from around the world during a one-year period (May 1st 2020 to April 30th 2021). Average CTRs were calculated according to publisher type, content vertical, language and country. The study also found that Facebook Pages curated manually by humans achieved CTRs identical to those automatically curated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). An analysis of A/B tested shares also revealed that publishers’ CTRs are 34% higher on average when Facebook shares are A/B tested.
Key findings include:
- A wide variation in Facebook CTRs exists between content verticals, with Sports publications achieving an average CTR of 4.5% while International News and Foreign Affairs publications record an average CTR of 1.8%.
- Magazines recorded the highest Facebook CTR of all publication types (2.8%)
- Dutch publishers recorded the highest Facebook CTRs of all countries studied (4.5%), while Italian publishers recorded the lowest CTRs (1.6%)
Antoine Amann, CEO of Echobox, said: “Until now, publishers have had no visibility into how organic Facebook shares performed across the industry, making it impossible to fully contextualise their own performance. This research offers unparalleled insight into CTRs – a critical metric for all publishers on Facebook – allowing them to compare their content performance to that of their peers for the very first time.”
Detailed results can be found in a free white paper entitled Facebook 2021 Publisher Benchmarks: Facebook CTRs: https://ebx.sh/FacebookCTRs2021
About Echobox
Echobox is the new standard in social media publishing, chosen by more than 1000 of the world’s leading publishers, including Newsweek, The Times, The Telegraph, Handelsblatt, Le Monde and Conde Nast. Publishers share more than 10 million posts and reach billions of people with Echobox each year. Echobox’s research and insights have been written about by many of the world’s leading publications including the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Techcrunch and Forbes. Read more at www.echobox.com/resources.
