Tagged: bit.ly

Inferring Facebook's Mobile Use Via Bit.ly

Analysts estimates are always interesting to read - especially if you know the real statistics which they are trying to prophetize.

Even when someone releases "official" statistics, they're usually hard to verify independently, and even harder to analyse by region.

Benedict Evans - who I've had the pleasure of meeting at Mobile Monday - published some very interesting official stats on Facebook's mobile usage.
Enders Facebook Stats-fs8
The statistics show that roughly 44% of Facebook use is "not mobile".

How does that chime with reality?

I've talked before (incessantly!) about how leaky bit.ly is - they allow anyone to view detailed statistics about your marketing campaigns. Why people continue to use them, I've no idea. But, luckily for us, it allows us to get a fairly balanced view of Facebook's userbase.

UK supermarket Tesco have been running this "sponsored story" on Facebook. I assume that it is being pushed out to a large and broadly representative sample of UK Facebook users.
Tesco Facebook Campaign

Using Bit.ly we can see the clickthrough statistics.
Facebook Mobile Stats
You can click on the image for a live view of the stats.

Having run my own tests, it appears that clicks on a Bit.ly link from the Android or iOS app appear as though they come from m.facebook - as do clicks from the mobile web site. So we can't break down the stats any further. That said, it's always useful to get a secondary data point.

People are sharing your links on Facebook. Over half the people clicking on them will be doing so from a mobile phone. Does your site provide a great mobile experience? If not - it's time to up your game.

No One Scans QR Codes - Apart From These 25 Thousand People

Earlier this year, I blogged about seeing these QR codes appearing on some train tickets.

QR Codes on Train Tickets

The campaign itself wasn't that great - a poor call-to-action and a decidedly mobile-unfriendly site - but I was interested in how many people had scanned them. Thanks to bit.ly's practice of exposing everyone's statistics, we can see exactly how well this campaign did.

QR Train Stats

Wow! Twenty-five thousand scans. It's not as good as Tesco's QR campaign (80k scans and counting) - but it's an interesting data point.

I don't know how many tickets these QR codes were printed on (I didn't see them on every ticket) so it's impossible to know the exact response rate. I do know that the cost of the codes was close to zero - black ink just isn't that expensive - and that part of the ticket isn't utilised for anything else.

QR codes aren't just for marketing hipsters from Shoreditch. They're increasingly popular with the British public, and I look forward to their continued use.

The Perils of URL Shortners

I'm not a big fan of URL shortners - bit.ly, t.co, goo.gl, ow.ly, etc - I understand the need for them, but they seem to offer a fairly poor service in terms of privacy and usefulness.

Take this recent example from Vodafone.
Vodafone SMS

Aside from the obvious downsides (user doesn't know where the link will take them, if it's compatible, link looks like gobbledegook, etc) there is a rather more interesting issue.

Goo.gl - along with many other URL shortners - give everyone access to your statistics.

Visiting http://goo.gl/NdVGI+ will let you see everything.

google vodafone stats

I don't know how many messages were sent out, so it's hard to calculate a response rate.

From the map, I can see the two target areas were UK and (unsurprisingly) Greece. There are a few hits in other countries - that could just be people connecting via WiFi networks routed through that country.

There are also a few hits from iPhones - suggesting either the targeting wasn't accurate, or people are spoofing the iOS user agent.

Still, it's an interesting insight into Vodafone's marketing.

Facebook's Mobile Adverts - Real Stats

Facebook has been getting a lot of criticism for its lack of mobile revenue. A fact it tried to hide from its IPO. Much ink has been spilled, but is it really necessary for Facebook to worry? Here's a quick case study.

Facebook has, in its infinite wisdom, decided that I would be interested in adverts for cancer. Or, perhaps, AXA have decided that 30 something males are a prime market.

The creator of the advert was Equator's Fiona Dow who, judging from her bitly profile just loves posting about cancer.

As I have mentioned several times before, bitly links are a great way to (unintentionally) share your stats. If we look at the clickthrough stats for this advert, we can find some interesting nuggets.

Here's the biggie - referrers shows where people where when they clicked on the link:

In total, nearly half of all clicks came from the mobile site.

Perhaps this is why Facebook hasn't jumped into bed with any dedicated mobile advertiser? It would seem that users are equally willing to click on Facebook's "Sponsored Stories" on mobile as well as web.

(This assumes that AXA targetted both platforms equally).

The only fly in the ointment is, you guessed it, AXA don't have a mobile friendly site.
AXA non-mobile site

I've been banging on about mobile-friendly advertising for years - and still advertisers don't get it! Not everyone has an iPhone. Not everyone who has an iPhone is on WiFi or 3G. Not every one want to have to pinch and zoom. If the first impression you're giving your customers is that you don't care about their needs - don't expect them to stick around too long.

So based on this datum, Facebook users are willing to click on mobile ads - all it now requires is Facebook to show them at appropriate times and advertisers to create mobile-dedicated campaigns.

Train Tickets With QR Codes

No, I'm not talking about Masabi's innovative technology, but of this rather odd bit of advertising found on the back of a train ticket.
QR Codes on Train Tickets
There's no specific call to action - but there's not much space to play with. Let's give it a scan...
Train Tickets non-mobile friendly

*sigh* A non-mobile site. With an Adobe Flash plugin in the top right which won't work on any iPhones. Why on Earth do marketing companies insist on pointing phones to non-mobile sites. It really bemuses me. Stations rarely have good signal (too many people leads to local network congestion) and, besides, large sites are a right pig to use on a small screen.

Stats

I've blogged several times about using Bit.ly links in QR codes. With a little bit of hacking (adding at + character to the end of the URL) we can see how many people have been scanning the code.
QR Click Stats Rail

I don't know how many of these tickets have been printed. That might be a really good conversion rate - but I doubt it. I only noticed the QR code because someone had dropped their ticket and it landed face-down. Realistically, how many people look at the back of their tickets?

The best campaign in the world would fail if it's not put in front of an audience.