Clicks vs. Engagement

Marketers have longed for the chance to plant their flags in social network sites. While marketers have a strong presence on these sites - many would say it's a must to do so - their efforts at running ads on social nets have not been as successful as they have been on other sites. Ad Week pointed out that online ad net Lotame recently did a study of this topic. They compared the results of click throughs and other interactions with ads from social networking sites and other large web entities.

As you might expect, click through rates on the social networks lagged behind the other sites, but interaction with ads on social networking sites was higher. Lotame found that 68% of viewers of ads on social net sites watched the full video, while only 62% of those on the other sites did so. One major caveat is that Facebook data is not included in the study.