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Ryan Boehme
8/14/16
Social Media Metrics: Business vs. Personal Measures of Success

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Abstract:
In a world where all forms of media content can be digitized, marketers are facing a
significant dilemma – the increasing need to adopt and exploit social media and their ability to
effectively measure it. The problem is that most businesses haven’t adequately defined the most
pertinent questions they need answered while analyzing the plethora of social media usage
metrics. Based on surveyed results detailed in this paper, 551 social media marketers worldwide
were asked to choose up to three social media platforms that they thought produced the best
return on investment (ROI). Amongst that group, almost all (95.8%) respondents indicated
Facebook (eMarketer). Additionally, nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of respondents said Twitter
produced the best ROI, and 40.1% of social media marketers said it was Instagram. When
determining what metric produces the best ROI on social media sites, 352 US small and
medium-sized business (SMB) professionals were surveyed in January 2016. 51% stated viewers
was the top metric to determine social media success. This was followed by posts (34%),
interactions (34%), audience growth (32%), and shares (30%).
Based on these metrics, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are amongst the highest
performers for businesses in terms of ROI value. They all have massive user bases and offer
users access/post all types of content (video, image, commentary, large amount of metrics, and
numerous amount of metrics designed for business use). The fact is many social media networks
have become very sophisticated with their user interface. Hence, as social media networks
become more complex, the need for more precise and intricate measurements are needed to
determine the ultimate value for companies participating on these social media sites. This
requires companies to utilize a variety of advanced metrics, beyond ‘likes’, to accurately
measure success (i.e. page views, bounce rate, unique visitors, etc.. In many circumstances, it
may likely require the creation of new metrics that do not currently exist within these social
media networks.

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Introduction:
In this digital era, the use of social media has become central to people’s lives. According
to Statisa’s coverage of social media users, there are currently 2.34 billion global users and 78%
of the entire US population has a social media profile (Statista). Users now have become more
dependent on social media platforms for not just entertainment, but for important daily activities
including news, scheduling, security, shopping and transportation. The usage of certain metrics
on these sites, such a “likes” and “favorites,” help users define what they want to view. Online
publishers have used these terms to help classify content and provide a measurable
marketing/advertising metric to promote their company, advertisers, products, and drive
profitability. This progression led to the process of businesses creating and analyzing social
media metrics to determine actual site user activity and subsequent behavior. These metrics have
become necessary to measure the overall user volume of publisher sites as well as the value for
associated brands.
One major issue has been that businesses did not initially realize how to evaluate
investments in social media beyond the basic volume of visitors and relative user-generated
opinions. They didn’t have access to the more sophisticated data necessary to understand what
important questions they needed to ask to best define value. If the successful use of social media
is defined by measures of improved brand health, customer involvement and overall revenue,
business must now interrogate data in innovative ways to learn how to use social media more
effectively. With more businesses utilizing social media, these questions are imperative to
understand consumer online behavior activities. This paper focuses on the disconnected usage of
metrics between social media site users and revenue-generating business cases. The goal is to
establish how businesses can't rely on certain basic metrics, such as “likes” and “favorites,” to
sustain revenue growth because they were originally designed for personal use for consumers.
Additionally, social media business growth is threatened by multiple inconsistent measurement
methodologies and statistics which may not adequately account for artificial usage and invalid
traffic.
This thesis paper will reveal multiple examples that display how common social media
metrics, such as "likes" and "favorites," do not translate to profit. It will also provide research
including psychological trends and theories associated with these metrics from a personal use
standpoint to discover why these measures most often do not satisfy business requirements of
profitability. Additionally, it will illustrate the most valuable metrics that will support the digital
media industry to properly understand, measure and monetize behavior on social media.

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Part 1: Current Business and Consumers Social Media Activities
Social media has clearly evolved as an essential part of people’s daily activities. With the
advent and massive adoption of personal digital devices, particularly tablets and smartphones,
users can access their social media profiles anywhere and at any time. Each year, Smart Insights
updates a massive global compendium of stats which summarizes key insights into digital access
to social media. The usage is staggering- below is a chart that displays global digital statistics
from January 2015-January 2016:
(Figure 1.0; Source: Smart Insights)
From January 2015-January 2016, there are approximately 2.3 billion active social media
users globally, with roughly 2 billion active mobile social media users. Figure 1.1 is a table
provided by eMarketer, an independent market research company that provides insights and
trends related to digital marketing. The image depicts the top 5 social media sites accessed by
internet users for the year 2015.

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(Figure 1.1; Source: eMarketer)
eMarketer described the methodology of the study as,
“Data is from the January 2016 Verto Analytics infographic titled "2015 Top 5 Social Media." A
panel of 250,000 US consumers ages 18+ who fulfill demographic and device ownership
representativeness are surveyed monthly. Additional analysis of traffic to social platforms from
users who are or are not logged in is included. Verto Analytics is a digital audience measurement
company,” (eMarketer).
As stated in the table above, Facebook was the most utilized social media network with
approximately 159 million desktop users, 152 million smartphone users, 75 million tablet users,
and 232 monthly unique users. The remaining top five social media networks include YouTube,
Google+, Instagram, and Twitter. Due to the enormous rise in usage, businesses followed these
impressive trends to participate with these sites and apps to attract and engage with their core
customer base and attract potential consumers. Companies who carefully establish and
successfully curate a social media presence can receive tremendous online exposure for their
brand(s), allowing them to showcase their products and services. Social media has also provided
a direct line of communication with consumers to help businesses understand what users are
saying, including their customers, prospects, peers and competitors. Additionally, all of this can
be accomplished without any expenses as it is free to create a social media profile. The only
expenditure comes with advertising on these networks and analyzing particular metrics to
determine key performance indicators (KPIs) to ascertain return on investments (ROIs). Figure
1.2 is a table provided by eMarketer that determines the top ten US TV networks on social media
sites as defined by total interactions as well as number of fans/followers:

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(Figure 1.2; Source: eMarketer)
Examining ESPN as an example in December 2015, the self-acclaimed “worldwide
leader in sports” alone had about 130 million fans/followers on social media sites. ESPN also had
nearly 134 million total interactions on these platforms. The question is how do companies like
ESPN decide on what content should be made available on specific sites? On June 13, 2013
Courtney Doman posted a social media blog post on Spredfast.com about an interview she
conducted with Katie Richman, Director of Social Media Strategy & Social Products for X
Games & ESPNW at ESPN. Doman proposed the question: “Various ESPN properties have
active presences across Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+, how do you approach content
across multiple channels?” Richman responded:
“We’re really specific about where we choose to be present. There was a time when you
could dabble in any channel that looked interesting but with so many platforms now, it’s
no longer possible. Our approach is to look at our demographics; who are we talking to?
For example, with ESPNW we’re talking to women, and there is an active female
audience on Pinterest. Secondarily, we look at the types of resources that we have.
Photography and images are a primary interest for ESPNW and Pinterest is a highly
visual channel, so it’s a natural fit. Those are two key questions in determining where to
be present on social: Who is your demographic? What resources do you have at your
disposal?” (Richman).
The key questions networks like ESPN ask themselves while deciphering what content to
post on their social media accounts is “who are we talking to.” Once a company decides their

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desired target audience, it is then clear who they are trying to reach (age, demographic, etc.) and
what network they elect to publish it (ex: Twitter is utilized mostly for posting breaking news,
Facebook and Instagram tend to publish visual content, and Pinterest is made up of a large
percentage of female users). Over the past several years, there have been many instances of
companies who have succeeded with utilizing social media to engage audiences. However, there
are multiple instances where professional organizations failed to effectively execute their
strategic goals. A key function that social media provides is the use of hashtags that help create
crowd-trending topics. This feature enables users and companies to promote and hopefully
popularize their posts. However, this key attribute which both users and businesses often fail to
fully comprehend is that a trending topic does not always necessarily mean the post will receive
a positive sentiment ranking among viewers. A prime example was when the New York Police
Department (NYPD) asked Twitter users to post their own photos of themselves and NYPD
officers using the hashtag #myNYPD. While it seemed like a noble idea to promote the positive
relationships of the police force and surrounding communities, the result was the opposite of
what the NYPD expected. Many users ended up posting very negative tweets towards how the
NYPD promoted police brutality. Figure 1.3 shows screen shots of tweets provided by
econsultancy.com:

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(Figure 1.3; Source: econsultancy.com)
Despite the unfortunate circumstance for the NYPD hashtag failure, there were many
instances of organizations that succeeded with the use of hashtags via social media platforms. A
prime example of this was the ALS Foundation who coined the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” on
social media networks. The challenge involved the video capture of participants dumping a
bucket of ice water on a volunteer's head to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS, known mostly in the US as Lou Gehrig's Disease) and encourage
donations to research. It went viral on social media during July–August 2014 with
#ALSIceBucketChallenge becoming a trending topic across all platforms (Cancer Society).
According to Forbes, the organization raised more than $100 million in a month, “a 3,500%
increase from the $2.8 million that the ALS Association raised during the same time period last
year. More than three million people have donated, the association says.” (Forbes).
These two examples prove how social media planning is critically important as it can
significantly affect the outcome of how companies will perform on these networks. The more
prepared businesses are with establishing a social media marketing plan, the more successful
they will be in determine their ROIs. The creators of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge planned out
how their campaign would perform on social media by managing social profiles and measuring
their performance with social analytics.

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Part 2: What are the current metrics associatedwith business success and consumer
satisfaction for social media?
Since all forms of content can potentially digitalized, there is clear evidence of separation
between marketers activating social media and their ability to effectively measure their
investment. Traditionally, “likes” and “favorites” indicated directly by users have been the
cornerstone metrics for evaluating social media sites in terms of gauging user reactions to news
feeds and interactions with others. However, measuring social media success can no longer be
adequately assessed using these traditional metrics. The nature of the communication process
and interaction within these social media platforms has evolved and requires innovative
approaches and data points to determine ROIs. SVM Solutions, an eMarketing solutions
company, posted an article on how to measure social media success. The organization stated that,
“According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers Survey, a majority of U.S. industrial
companies are having trouble measuring social media marketing ROI. Measure Social
Media Marketing Success I can understand their frustration. Too many companies
measure social media marketing success by only counting esoteric measures such as
“Likes” and “Followers.” Unfortunately, these measures don’t go far enough to
demonstrate ROI and, according to research, over 80% of people that “Like” a Facebook
business page never return to it again,” (SVM Solutions).
To further support this claim, every electronic medium is now being affected by the
convergence of technology and data. With the advent of digital, traditional media (TV, print,
radio) has evolved their digital platforms to ensure consumers can access content across multiple
screens/and or devices. Digital media, resulting from the game-changing technology of instant
access with measurable usage, is now obligated to provide advanced metrics of performance for
investors. Unfortunately, there are multiple standards of measurement, including 3rd party
companies as well as the originating media. In fact, various professional organizations dedicate
critical time and energy to expose, discuss and resolve these emerging issues of media
effectiveness by developing and supporting new metrics of performance. During the summer of
2013 the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Conference was held in Times Square, NYC
from June 9th-11th. The ARF “is an association where practitioners from every avenue of
advertising – agency, academia, marketer, media, and research – gather to exchange ideas and
research strategies,” (ARF). This conference was located at the prestigious Marriott Marquis and
hosted professionals within the media industry who presented what their companies do and their
specific types of research methods used to measure audiences. There were many great speakers
that delivered very in-depth presentations on what their companies have been working on the
past year.

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The first speaker was Jeff Boehme, representing Kantar Media Audiences, and detailed
the company’s success in measuring consumer media habits for the automotive industry. Despite
all the time spent on commercials used for advertisement, only about 4% of households in the
US buy a car annually. The method Kantar Media was able to measure their audience in the
particular case was through the use of Return Path Data (any user activity collected from a digital
device) and metrics such as TUNEAWAY and the Commercial Tuning Index (CTI). These
advanced metrics to help understand the value of commercials by measuring the actual seconds
viewers, identified as car buyers, spend watching commercials compared to the programs in
which they appear. This helped lead to advertisers successfully targeting actual car buys and
assess viewer/consumer engagement, so they can drive to success.
Another presentation was titled, “How AT&T Optimizes TV Allocations Through Multi-
Stage Market Mix Models.” Speakers Charlie Payne (AT&T Mobility), Greg Pharo (AT&T) and
Damon Samuel (AT&T) all shared how AT&T was able to determine the Return on Investment
(ROI) for each major component of its national TV buy: network, cable, and sponsorship and
how multi-stage mix modeling approach quantifies the ROI for specific TV networks and
specific sponsorship investments. Throughout the speech, the most important details focused on
how their sponsorship effectiveness was driven by three factors: level of engagement, length of
sponsorship, and the synergy with the AT&T brand.
A featured event of the conference was devoted to the effectiveness of social media titled,
“The Relationship Era.” The speaker was Bob Garfield, who worked for MediaPost and is a Co-
Host on NPR’s “On The Media,” and author of publications including his latest book, Can’t Buy
Me Like. The presentation examined what is called the “Relationship Era,” where the only path
for businesses seeking long-term success is to create authentic customer relationships. Mr.
Garfield revealed how in today’s world companies are using social media to advertise their
products and services, the successes and failures. His point was although millions of people in
the US use social media on a daily basis, businesses cannot rely on user-generated voting
indicators such as “likes” on a page as proof that people actually like and buy the
product/service. For example, Mr. Garfield displayed an example of a Facebook page for a type
laundry detergent. He stated how the page only has three likes on it. Meanwhile he flipped to the
next slide which as the Facebook page of the Devil which had over 600,000 likes. Despite the
number of “likes” on a social media page, those “likes” are not reliable data measure how well a
product/service is performing in the marketplace. Companies were misusing metrics to determine
their ROIs because they were originally designed for personal use.
To further support Mr. Garfield’s claim on the ineffectiveness of “like” and “favorites”
metrics to determine profitability, Figure 1.4 provided by eMarketer displays the top metrics that
are being used to measure social media success:

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(Figure 1.4; Source: eMarketer)
Based on 352 US SMB professionals were surveyed in January 2016, 51% stated viewers
were the top metric to determine social media success. This was followed by posts (34%),
interactions (34%), audience growth (32%), and shares (30%). Notice how three years later after
Garfield’s conference in 2013, “likes” and “favorites” are not even mentioned as key metrics for
businesses to determine ROIs. However, even these metrics deserve continued scrutiny. While
total user exposures and interactions can be relevant for evaluating gross audience delivery and
duplication to a company’s content, it doesn’t mean that the person will buy their
products/become a loyal customer. Other data connected to that metric can help qualify that
metric as a true value of consumer value. Instead of exploiting “likes,” companies have begun to
utilize metrics designed for business use such as a “unique visitor.” According to the Marketing
Accountability Standard Board,
“Unique visitors refers to the number of distinct individuals requesting pages from the
website during a given period, regardless of how often they visit. Visits refers to the
number of times a site is visited, no matter how many visitors make up those visits. When
an individual goes to a website on Tuesday, then again on Wednesday, this is recorded as
two visits from one visitor.” (Source: Marketing Accountability Standard Board).
The purpose of tracking unique visitors is to help marketers understand website user
behavior. Since a visitor can make multiple visits during a period of time, the number of visits
may be greater than the number of visitors. Therefore, a visitor can sometimes be referred to as a
unique visitor to clearly convey the idea that each visitor is only counted once.

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Part 3 - Examples of specific business applications exploring successful and unsuccessful
social media events/applications.
Dos Equis is a Mexican imported beer brand. They have two top competitors in the
Mexican imported beer category: Corona and Negra Modelo. Figure 1.5 is a bar graph, presented
by Dr. Felipe Korzenny, displaying how Dos Equis competes with their top competitors and the
percentage of how many Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic people drink the beer.
(Figure 1.5; Source: Dr. Felipe Korzenny)
The data illustrates that Corona is the number one brand in the imported beer category
among Hispanic and non-Hispanic consumers. It also the most often consumed “Mexican” beer
brand for Hispanic and non-Hispanic people. Modelo Especial falls in second place for most
often consumed “Mexican” beer brand followed by Dos Equis and Negra Modelo. It also shows
how Hispanic people drink Dos Equis more frequently than non-Hispanic individuals. In terms
of branding on the internet, Dos Equis’s website is designed to attract and entertain consumers.
The layout includes nine separate tabs which feature: history of the beer brand, upcoming events
and campaigns, and social media content. Most importantly, the site highlights “The Most
Interesting Man in the World” character, linking to the most recent advertising campaigns and
promotions. According to UTalkMarketing, once the campaign was launched in 2006, sales of
Dos Equis rose more than 17% during a period where imported beer sales dropped 11%
(UTalkMarketing). Alexa, a web traffic estimator site powered by Amazon, stated Dos Equis’s
website ranks the 171,852nd popular webpage in the United States with a high bounce rate of
60.00% for their viewers. In comparison to their competitors, Corona’s website is the 40,520th
most popular in the United States with a bounce rate of only 20.00% for their visitors.

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In terms of social media presence in 2015, Dos Equis was most prevalent on Facebook,
Twitter, and Instagram. According to their social media networks, Dos Equis had 352,443
followers on Facebook, 69,700 on Twitter, and 29,500 on Instagram. As a major form of
marketing and promotion for businesses is done through social media campaigns, Dos Equis
created “The Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign to capture their audience’s attention.
UTalkMarketing.com stated how, “According to Google Analytics, visitors spend an average of
7.42 minutes per visit at the Dos Equis' website, where the Most Interesting Man dominates,”
(UTalkMarketing.com).
As “Most Interesting Man in the Word” campaign has been displayed on TV, radio, and
print ads, it became prevalent on social media. “The Most Interesting Man in the World” soon
became an Internet meme, with a picture of “The Most Interesting Man accompanying the
phrasal template "I don't always _____, but when I do, I ______,” substituting funny sayings
from the original commercial’s concluding phrase. According to the social media measuring tool,
Topsy, these memes became a trending hit on Twitter feeds, producing great consumer and brand
awareness of the campaign and Dos Equis. The company also posts advertisements of “The Most
Interesting Man in the World” on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Topsy determined in an analysis that during a seven-day period, the “The Most Interesting Man
in the World” was tweeted 714 times and received a Topsy Sentiment Score: 84.
To further monetize Dos Equis’s value of the organization's social media, the company
should capitalize on holidays and the four seasons for establishing new and existing campaigns,
promotions, and events. For example, Dos Equis is launching their fifth annual Masquerade
Program. According to the Beverage Journal, “It will be supported by a comprehensive
marketing campaign that includes national TV, radio and out of home advertising, digital
partnerships, retail and on premise POS materials and a sweepstakes providing consumers the
opportunity to enter to win the grand prize trip to New York City to attend a Dos Equis inspired
event,” (Beverage Journal). Events like these will help generate brand awareness and keep more
visitors engaged on their social media platforms. Most importantly, the brand is seeing great
sales success with the current campaign. It is clear that this popular campaign has not maximized
its audience appeal. In fact, consumer interest seems to be increasing with each new addition. By
tying in the successful theme with more events during the course of the year on different
locations, the brand continued to grow in the Mexican imported beer category among both
Hispanics and general consumers. However as every advertising campaign comes to an end, Dos
Equis retired the “Most Interesting Man in the Word” effective March, 2016.
An example of a non-successful social event that occurred in 2015 was the
#TwizzlerChallenge. Does this ring a bell…or no? The campaign mocked the ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge in the sense of trying to engage large amounts of social media users to promote the
Twizzler brand. The idea was to have two people chew on a Twizzler until their lips meet,
creating the old Disney “Lady and the Tramp Scene.” The goal was to have participants donate
and encourage others to raise money autism research. While the event seemed promising

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(especially as it replicated the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge), the consumer interest did not match up
to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Also, the fact that you can’t search how much money was
raised for the challenge demonstrated how much it was not the next Ice Bucket Challenge.
ClickZ posted an interview with Matt Dowshen, President of Full-Service Agency
Partners + Napier NYC. He offered his insights onto why this social media campaign failed:
“The ‘Twizzler Challenge’ involves a well-known brand, which reeks of
marketing…Will [the two challengers] kiss? Did they kiss? Should they kiss? These are
all interesting questions. But that story begs for thought beyond the cause, [while]
dumping an icy bucket of water on your head didn’t,” (ClickZ).
Dowshen also commented stating that there was an irrelevant event that became
distracting for people to follow. Was the campaign about the possible relationship between two
people? Or was it about people standing up for a good cause? Shelley Ong, Brand Impact Lead at
Agency Enso, spoke about the disconnect between the brand itself and autism:
“While I’m all for sugar-sweet kisses in good fun for a good cause, what feels like the
missing ingredient is an authentic connection between Twizzlers and the pursuit of
autism awareness,” she says. “I would challenge brands like Twizzlers instead to consider
a shared value strategy: What are their brand values and business strategy? And how does
that align with what the world needs? Taking a shared value approach would allow
brands like Twizzlers to build social initiatives that align with their core, resulting in
sustainable impact over time,” (ClickZ).
The #TwizzlerChallenge is an example of a failed business application designed for
social media that proves that if one successful consumer social media event (ALS Ice Bucket
Challenge) succeeds, a similar approach does not guarantee success as a business concept. This
statement coincides with the idea of businesses advertising on social media. Just because there is
a high frequency of social media users on a national/global spectrum, it does not assure the
content companies post on these platforms will translate to successful business investments.
Organizations must “do their homework” when it comes to promoting on social media networks
and determining ROIs, because there is an obvious disconnect of the usage between social media
site users and the business use cases.

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Part 4-Principles & Best Practices.
According to a study provide by eMarketer, nearly all social media marketers worldwide
believe Facebook produces the best ROI and is essential to social media marketing success.
(Figure 1.6; Source: eMarketer)
The March 2016 study stated, “Social Fresh, Firebrand Group and Simply Measured
surveyed 551 social media marketers worldwide and asked them to choose up to three social
media platforms that they thought produced the best ROI. Almost all (95.8%) of social media
marketers worldwide said Facebook did,” (eMarketer).
Additionally, nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of respondents said Twitter produced the best
ROI, and 40.1% of social media marketers said it was Instagram. Surprisingly, only 2.1% of
social media marketers said Snapchat produced the best ROI. According to reports posted by
MediaKix,
“From May 2015 to May 2016, Snapchat’s daily video views have grown 400% over the
course of the year (from 2 billion to 10 billion, according to Bloomberg). At a linear
monthly growth rate of 33%, Snapchat will surpass 18 billion daily video views by
May 2017. The Financial Times also noted that Snapchat’s video views have tripled
every 6 months…According to Re/code, Snapchat ads are seen anywhere between
500,000 to a million times per day. Snapchat has recently expanded their advertising
options for brands and now allow marketers to make purchases through the app, buy all
of the sponsored lenses in a given day, and more (Business Insider),” (MediaKix).

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However, this was the most interesting point pertaining to evaluating Snapchat vs.
Facebook from an ROI perspective:
“Snapchat now boasts over 10 billion videos views per day, according to Bloomberg,
surpassing rival Facebook's 8 billion daily video views (Fortune). Although Snapchat’s
criteria for what it counts as a "view" is admittedly shorter than Facebook's, the fact that
the viewer must press play to see content (as opposed to Facebook's autoplay videos)
guaranteed engagement,” (MediaKix).
Despite Snapchat emerging as one of the top grossing and popular social media, it seems
evident that the platform/design does overtly define profitability for businesses. With exposures
being the main measurement for companies to determine ROIs, creating an interface solely
dedicated to video content seems to be appealing for only user-generated content.
What’s not surprising is the study provided by eMarketer stated that marketers are
continually turning to Facebook for their marketing efforts. The social media company continues
to grow steadily. According to eMarketer estimates, the population of Facebook reaches 1.43
billion monthly users by the end of the year 2016 (Figure 1.7).
(Figure 1.7; Source: eMarketer)

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“In addition, mobile will account for 82.0% of Facebook’s US digital ad revenue
this year, eMarketer estimates. Ad revenues generated by Instagram and mobile
video formats on Facebook will drive this growth. This year, Instagram is
expected to earn $1.30 billion in the US ($1.53 billion worldwide) in mobile ad
revenues. In the US, Instagram will represent 15.4% of Facebook’s total mobile
ad revenues,” (eMarketer).”
Figure 1.8 is an additional study provided by eMarketer that depicts the media value for
companies advertising on particular social media platforms:
(Figure 1.8; Source: eMarketer)
eMarketer states that:
“Data is from the March 2016 Ayzenberg "Earned Media Value Index." To assess US
earned media value for 2015, Ayzenberg analyzed third-party reports, external and
internal data and considered its own experience in pricing creative media placements
across industry verticals and venues. Ayzenberg is an advertising agency.”
This study presents strong evidence that the nature of communication with social media
platforms has evolved and requires new approaches and innovative metrics to determine ROIs.
Despite Snapchat becoming one of the most prevalent social media networks over the past year,
there are no metrics (besides views) for companies to determine their profitability for advertising
their content. It is clear there needs to be more measurements implemented within Snapchat’s
interface to assist companies in assessing their marketing investments. No organization can

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solely rely on exposures to determine ROIs. The only exception may be is Snapchat might offer
proprietary metrics for their clients to determine their ROIs. Although this might be true, it
seems unlikely since there should have been more than 2.1% of the marketing professionals
surveyed in the eMarketer March 2016 study who would have voted for Snapchat as a social
media platform that produces the best ROI.

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Part 5 - Conclusion of findings, recommendations, and projections of how both businesses
and consumers will develop going forward.
When determining the most effective social media, it seems evident that platforms like
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are amongst the top. They all have large user bases and offer
users to access and post all types of content (video, image, commentary, large amount of metrics,
and numerous amount of metrics designed for business use). On the other hand, a network like
Snapchat only offers video-based content and seems not developed fully enough to become a
reliable platform for business to advertise on and determine their ROIs.
However, companies must now be very cautious when determining their social media
outlets. Using Facebook as an example: the constant usage of consumers, users and companies of
Facebook pages are now encountering trouble with the social media network reducing organic
engagement. According to a video posted by Veritasium, an educational science channel on
YouTube created by Derek Muller in 2011, Facebook appears non-transparent with user
generated posts and content. It seems that specific content that people post onto Facebook only
goes to a fraction of their friends. The only way it becomes publicized is when multiple friends
like, share, and comment on the content and then it becomes more visible to other users. If
nothing happens to it outside of the user publishing it, the post fails. Imagine what this does to
businesses who want to publicize content of their own; they have to rely on consumer likes,
shares, and comments on social media to keep their posts exposed. Veritasium continued to state
that with approximately 4.75 billion posts per day, Facebook is taking advantage of their filtering
power to generate profit. In doing so, Facebook restricts the reach of posts in order for users and
businesses to pay and promote important pages. The video clip offered the example of
Veritasium’s personal Facebook page. With the company’s page having over 109,000 likes, their
most recent post reached only 9,000 people. That is only approximately nine percent of their
page followers, exemplifying how Facebook is restricting how posts are being publicized.
Another video by Veritasium demonstrated how Rory Cellan-Jones created a Facebook
page, “Virtual Bagel,” and bought likes to determine the success. The page turned out to have
over 1,600 likes, but the majority of users were from developing countries. It proves that a large
number of likes does not necessarily mean success for the company. Organic engagement,
therefore, should not be suppresses by companies such as Facebook. It prevents legitimate
interactions of users and ultimately companies, with their products and services. The point of
social media is to allow users to engage in open forums without strategic interference by
companies for their own benefit.
If businesses indeed do not know what questions they are trying to answer while
analyzing social media metrics, they will need to study the data to determine value. By studying
the usage data, companies need to utilize multiple other metrics beyond likes to measure success
(i.e. page views, bounce rate, unique visitors, etc.). They will create new metrics from these
massive data sets that do not currently exist within these social media networks.

20. Boehme 20
An example of a company that can take advantage of creating metrics to better determine
success with advertising on social media is Viacom. The multimedia company uses many metrics
in reports to help analyze their audience value in television programs. The primary reason for
measuring audiences is to establish the number of viewers compared to competing networks,
which determines the success of television and digital content. Examples of the main metrics
Viacom uses to measure their online TV audiences include number of visits, unique visitors:
“number of distinct individuals requesting pages from the website during a given period,
regardless of how often they visit,” (Web Analytics 2.0, pg.55), and bounce rate: “the percentage
of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page,”
(Web Analytics 2.0, pg. 69). As there are a copious amount of metrics Viacom utilizes to measure
their shows, there are many that currently don’t exist that would help assist the company in
assessing their television and digital content. Perhaps a new metric titled, “Bounce Rate
Destination,” could be helpful to determine Viacom’s ROI’s on certain social media sites.
The idea for this new metric was designed by using the “Metrics Lifestyle Process”
illustrated by author, Avinash Kaushik in Figure 1.9:
(Figure 1.9; Source: Kaushik)
While collecting Viacom data from the online marketing and analytics company,
Omniture, the company ultimately wants to see how their TV and digital content compared with
other major broadcast companies such as NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC. When selecting the
metrics, the three main ones (number of visits, unique visitors, and bounce rate) were included in
every report analyzed for Viacom. After examining the data and comparing Viacom content to
the other main broadcast networks, some of Viacom’s content contained noticeable bounce rating
compared to all other networks. Due to the bounce rate, it seems logical Viacom should be
focused to determine where their viewers go after viewing their content. The new Bounce Rate

21. Boehme 21
Destination (BRD) metric will incorporate both quantitative qualitative measurements such as
the original Viacom content watched, original bounce rate, and the new program watched
(including name of network, type of genre, and the amount of time watched). Hopefully the BRD
metric will enable Viacom to analyze their content in order to fully understand what their
consumer’s preferences are to compete for consumers’ attention with other major networks in the
multimedia industry.
The fact is that many social media networks have now become very sophisticated with
their user interface. In an interview with Jacquelyn Schroder, currently a Digital Manager at
SharkNinja and Adjunct Professor at Quinnipiac University, she discussed her experience
attending a Facebook conference in San Francisco, CA. The big takeaway was Facebook wants
to “change the world,” and “connect everyone everywhere.” She pointed out Facebook was
planning to create a new ad platform with different formats. One included creating
advertisements through their Facebook messaging function. Can you imagine brands reaching
out to consumers via Facebook message vs. an outdated email chain? From a business
perspective, this would be very interesting to see. The more complex a social media network
becomes, the more intricate measurements need to be created from the business end to determine
ROIs for companies on these social media sites.
While it is evident that technology has forever changed and will continue to change how
people consume media, data are enabling the smarter media companies to determine what works
and what doesn’t in terms of what content is worth accessing on all the relevant digital platforms.
A primary source of revenue, advertising, needs to prove that marketers’ investments are worth
the price. As social media networks offer access to all types of content (video, image,
commentary, large amounts many new metrics are necessary to evaluate consumers’ interaction
with this content. The key is the value of their content, but consumers need to find it when and
where they want. Advanced metrics and qualified data scientist with media research experts can
measure that consumer experience so companies can maintain revenue growth and longer-term
profitability.

22. Boehme 22
Ryan Boehme
8/14/16
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