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TBG Digital’s CEO Simon Mansell tells me “this is huge news that show mobile is potentially going to be the big revenue driver that Facebook needs, especially because the usage in there.”

According to a new study by TBG Digital on 278,389,453 Sponsored Story ad impressions across 17 clients, mobile news feed Sponsored Stories (the only ads Facebook shows on mobile) have a stunning click-through rate of 1.14% at a $0.86 CPC. That means Facebook earns $9.86 per 1000 impressions (eCPM), and that could actually rise as more advertisers realize the power of mobile Sponsored Stories and compete for impressions there.

Compare those numbers to the desktop news feed Sponsored Stories that get a 0.588% CTR at $0.63 CPC and earn Facebook an eCPM of $3.72, and Facebook is getting 1.93x the CTR and earning 2.65x as much on mobile sponsored stories compared to what it makes on the web.

Earlier this month, Facebook noted that pages could see a decrease in organic reach as a result of News Feed algorithm tweaks that favor newsworthy posts. However, many marketers and Facebook page admins are reporting that they’re seeing an extreme drop in organic reach — as much as 44 percent in some cases — and it has been going on for months.

Komfo, a social marketing firm, studied fan penetration among 5,000 Facebook pages of various sizes from August through November with the following findings: 42% decrease in fan penetration 31% increase in viral amplification 28% increase in clickthrough rate (CTR)

In Komfo we do not doubt that the survey shows that there is no “free lunch” on Facebook anymore, and companies have to start investing in Facebook advertising if they want to reach the right audience with their content. However, it also shows that the Facebook’s algorithms, that control what we see in our newsfeed, have been improved. Facebook has become better at showing a page’s content to the most engaged users. Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media, also saw significant drops in organic reach. In a study of 689 posts of 21 large brand pages found that in the week of Facebook’s announcement, organic reach dipped an average of 44 percent. Tobin pointed out that the previously accepted reach percentage of 16 percent can now be as low as 3 percent.

If you use Facebook to communicate about or administer a promotion (such as a contest or sweepstakes)

Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App. ii.    Promotions on Facebook must include the following: a.    A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant. b.    Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook. c.    Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook. iii.    You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.

Share breaking news updates: Lavrusik and Hershkowitz said posts that included the terms “breaking” or “breaking news” saw engagement 57 percent higher than non-breaking news posts

Use a conversational tone and include analysis: Posts with a personal tone or clever language saw engagement of 120 percent above the average, and posts with analysis received 20 percent more referral clicks.

Start conversations by asking questions and responding: Posts with prompts for conversation of questions saw engagement 70 percent above the average

to determine if any given Page post shows up in the news feed, Facebook looks at four main factors: If you interacted with an author’s posts before: If you Like every post by a Page that Facebook shows you, it will show you more from that Page. Other people’s reactions to a specific post: If everyone else on Facebook shown a post ignores it or complains, it’s less likely to show you that post. Your interaction with posts of the same type in the past: If you always Like photos, there’s a better chance you’ll see a photo posted by a Page. If that specific post has received complaints by other users who have seen it, or the Page who posted it has received lots complaints in the past, you’ll be less likely to see that post. This factor became a lot more prevalent starting in September 2012.

Let’s say Darth Vader posts that he and Luke Skywalker have confirmed that they are father and son. To determine if Yoda saw this post in his news feed, Facebook would look at: whether Yoda had Liked or interacted with posts by Vader in the past, if Leia and Han Solo Liked the relationship post by Vader when Facebook showed it to them, whether Yoda tended to interact with relationship change posts in the past, and whether anyone else had complained about Vader or this particular post by the Sith Lord.

There are conflicting reports about the actual impact on average reach, though. Some like PageLever say it stayed stable, but others like We Are Social and SocialBakers say that average Page reach decreased by as much as 50 percent.

Facebook has lost 10 million users in the US and seen no growth in monthly visitors in the UK over the past year

Research shows that the number of unique visitors to the Facebook website from computers, smartphones and tablets has fallen from 153m in March 2012 to 142m in March this year, having peaked at 158m last August.

1.11 billion monthly active users around the world, up 23% from a year ago. Mobile monthly active users were 751 million, up 54%. But much of the growth is coming from poorer nations, where advertising revenues are lower

Facebook’s algorithm uses a number of factors to establish which posts should be shown to users. Previously called EdgeRank, the algorithm now has more than 1,000 contributing factors, but it still focuses on three main influences: affinity, weight, and Time.

Affinity is defined by a user’s relationship with the person or page that created the specific Facebook object — essentially how much the user interacts with that person or page.

Time, the last major factor, takes into account how recent the action occurred, which, in Facebook vernacular, is called time decay.

women tend to spend more time on social networks, post more photos and have more Facebook friends, while men tend to check them more often).

personality played a much bigger factor in how people use social networks than previously thought. While personality only accounted for a 6% difference in self-reported time spent on Facebook, it accounted for a 14% variance in regret over Facebook posts and interactions, a 16% variance in postings about one’s self and a 41% variance in postings about others.

The study confirmed previous research that showed people with less social stability reported spending more time on Facebook, while more emotionally stable and more introverted users primarily used Facebook to keep up with friends. The study also lent some credibility to the theory that introverts often use Facebook to make up for a lack of interpersonal communication.

median teen Facebook user has 300 friends. Girls and older teenagers tend have substantially larger friend networks than boys and younger teens.

while 70 percent of teens surveyed are Facebook friends with their parents, focus groups conducted by Pew show that this kind of interaction is the main problem for the age group. Teens felt like with mom and dad electronically close by, they couldn’t truly express themselves, opting for sites such as Twitter and Instagram: In focus groups, many teens expressed waning enthusiasm for Facebook. They dislike the increasing number of adults on the site, get annoyed when their Facebook friends share inane details, and are drained by the “drama” that they described as happening frequently on the site. The stress of needing to manage their reputation on Facebook also contributes to the lack of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the site is still where a large amount of socializing takes place, and teens feel they need to stay on Facebook in order to not miss out.

Unlike many of their adult counterparts, teens feel they’re pretty good at managing their Facebook privacy settings. 60 percent of teens aged 12 through 17 in the study say they have their Facebook profile private, so only their friends can see it.

In 2009, a Facebook account holder Liked, on average, 4.5 Pages. In just four years, this number increased to an average of 40 Pages! Not only that, but brands have been expanding their use of social media in their marketing campaigns, raising the number of Facebook posts that they make from an average of five times per month to 36. This means that in 2009, Facebook users only had to keep up with a manageable 23 updates per month, whereas they are currently bombarded with around 1 440 updates per month!

Some countries Like even more Pages than the 40 Page average, making them even harder to penetrate. The US takes the lead, Liking a whopping 70 Pages! The UK and France are tied, with their Facebook users Liking 48 Pages, on average. Mexican Facebook users follow closely, Liking an average of 41 Pages.

Our figures show that FMCG brands in the US may find it especially difficult to reach their fans, as this industry has the most Liked Pages.

Facebook has been losing traffic and sales since the 2012 holidays, while Pinterest has been steadily trending upward.

Facebook’s share of traffic hit 92 percent in mid-December, then plummeted to 69 percent in the week leading up to Easter. Pinterest has grown from 6 percent to 25 percent in that time. Also in mid-December, at the peak of the holiday shopping season, Facebook’s market share of sales hit 89 percent, then fell to 78 percent by Easter. Pinterest grew from 10 percent to 21 percent in that same period.

the fundamental differences in how people use Facebook and Pinterest make the latter a better option for commerce. She likened Facebook ads to a marketer pitching wares while users are having conversations with friends, while Pinterest is more like window shopping at a store that the user chooses.

the company found that media plans that included Facebook saw 24 percent more new sales than those that didn't.

Facebook’s head of measurement and insights Brad Smallwood said Aggregate Knowledge’s findings are "pretty consistent with independent studies we run looking at offline transactions." He pointed to one announced in October with Datalogix that indicated campaigns focused on reach saw a 70 percent higher ROI than those aimed at clicks.

Facebook was "very strong" when it came to channels that first encountered a user, Jakubowski said, but was not usually the last channel to see a user before they convert. That last-click attribution, for better or worse, is what helped Google establish a multibillion dollar advertising business. “Where Facebook gets last-touch credit is where it’s the only place on the planet that reached that user,” Jakubowski said. Facebook tends to factor in a couple days or weeks before a user converts, he noted. Smallwood emphasized that marketers shouldn’t look at Facebook in silo but consider an entire media mix and attribute success through multi-touch attribution.

Last week Princeton researchers released a widely covered study saying Facebook would lose 80% of its users by 2015-2017. But now Facebook’s data scientists have turned the study’s silly “correlation equals causation” methodology of tracking Google search volume against it to show Princeton would lose all of its students by 2021.

the critical error in the non-peer-reviewed study is stating that since the volume of searches for “Facebook” began declining in 2012, it must mean there’s an ongoing decline in Facebook usage. Yeah, no. Back in Facebook’s web heyday around 2007, many people did surf to the social network by searching for “Facebook” or “Facebook login.” But then this thing called mobile came along and people started getting to Facebook by opening an app, not searching for a website. So searches for “Facebook” declining doesn’t prove much considering over half of Facebook’s traffic now comes from mobile. Since 2012 Facebook has kept growing to its current 1.19 billion users, and it has never had an overall decline in user count.

Each month 250 million Facebook users tag posts with location.

Right now Nearby is very static. It doesn’t even show you Places where friends are currently checked-in. That has to change. If a friend is checked-in at a Nearby Place, that should be called out in the results and used as a strong signal of relevance.

Facebook Events is also sorely missing from the experience. Facebook should work into Nearby results Events that I’m invited to, as well as Suggested Events that my friends are attending so I don’t miss a party down the block.

traditional advertisers have treated Facebook and other social networks as traditional media: Something where a click should have a measurable return on investment. Advertisers who “get” social media understand that it's about strengthening relationships with their biggest fans, and hoping those fans can turn their friends onto the product as well.

The ComScore report is littered with the phrase “Fans and Friends of Fans,” signaling the strong emphasis successful brands are taking to cater to the people who can implicitly endorse them to others. If one of your friends is a fan of Starbucks, you’re more likely to be exposed to a Starbucks message on Facebook. And if you’re exposed to a Starbucks message on Facebook, you’re 38% more likely to make a purchase in the next four weeks.

too many brands, the report argues, still focus on accumulating the most number of likes instead of figuring out how best to engage those fans. It’s not to say that fan accumulation isn’t important; it is the crucial starting point. But too many brands treat it like an end game instead of a first step in getting to the real end game - the return on investment of time and money in building a social media presence.

Fewer people are seeing Facebook posts from brands, businesses and celebrities, the social network has acknowledged. 

It is unclear how page views have been affected, but a report from Valleywag today claims the company is slashing organic reach to just one to two percent of people who have clicked a Page’s Like button.

Each day, there are an average of 1,500 stories the company can show in someone’s news feed, and Facebook said in December that as a result of the increased competition for post views, many pages will likely see a decline in organic reach.

Though Facebook is still the most popular social network among teens, their enthusiasm for Mark Zuckerberg's network is decreasing, according to new findings from the Pew Research Center. Pew reports that 77% of online teens (ages 12-17) surveyed use Facebook. But while Pew's findings show that teens view Facebook participation as important for socializing, they have "waning enthusiasm for Facebook," as explained in the video above. The report cites teens' dislike for over-sharing and stressful "drama" on the social network. Teens also don't like the fact that more and more adults are joining Facebook, although Pew found that 7 in 10 teens are Facebook friends with their parents.

Pew found 24% of online teens use Twitter, an increase from 16% in 2011

Outside of Twitter and Facebook, teens don't have as much of an online presence. In 2012, 11% of teen social media users used Instagram, while Tumblr (5%), Google+ (3%) and Pinterest (1%) drew in even fewer teens.

Companies currently spend 8.4% of their marketing budgets on social media, and that’s expected to grow to 21.6% in the next five years.

Pinterest has a higher concentration of people who are in a ‘buy’ state of mind, while Facebook users are more interested in interacting with friends - and brands. (According to Paul Adams, Facebook’s global head of brand design, Facebook’s strength is relationship-building, noting that many lightweight interactions over time can help promote brands.)

Pinterest traffic spent 60% more than did traffic coming from Facebook. Pinterest traffic converted to a sale 22% more than Facebook. Facebook traffic bounced 90% of the time, compared to 75% for Pinterest. Facebook users viewed an average of 1.6 pages. Pinterest users saw an average of 2.9 pages – an 81% difference.

Currently, there are six different ad placements available to advertisers: Homepage All Facebook News Feed (desktop, mobile) Typeahead Logout Page (available only through Facebook IO)

Selecting “Homepage” as a placement will display your ads on the News Feed on desktop, right-hand side on homepage, and on News Feed for mobile.

Ads under the “All Facebook” place option may be shown on the right-hand side of Facebook, the desktop News Feed, or the Mobile News Feed. Facebook will decide exactly where to display your ad in order to drive the most clicks and actions, according to your budget.