Recent reporting shows that people are spending less time on Facebook. While most people still use the social media platform, and it is still the dominant player in social media, the fact that people aren’t on it as much may be a concern for marketers who use the system. The drop in average time spent per visit is estimated to be as high as 24%, which is quite a large number.
Part of this drop was intentional, according to Facebook anyway. They say that they made changes to how they display information to users so that they will be getting what they want more quickly. This would, naturally, reduce the amount of time they would be spending on the site.
One of the biggest concerns for marketers is going to be what this will do to the effectiveness and cost of the advertisements on the site. With fewer total hours being spent on Facebook, that means fewer ad spots that can be filled. Assuming there is no change in demand (which is not the case, demand is actually up), that would drive the average price per impression up.
On top of this, the total number of daily active users on Facebook has dropped in the key US market. Facebook reported that they went from 185 million daily users down to 184 million. While still too early to call this a trend, it is certainly something to keep in mind for anyone who is using Facebook (or any social media really) for marketing.
