Facebook Introduces Real-Time Analytics for Pages

Facebook plans to roll out analytics that will for the first time give Page administrators visibility about real-time activity on the site.

The addition to Pages Insights is expected to roll out over the next few weeks, a rep from the company says. The analytics will be available to all Page administrators globally. Such administrators will have instant access to real time results for People Talking About This, and Page post metrics including Reach (Organic, Paid, Viral) and Engaged Users.

The upshot for marketers, media outlets, public figures and organizations is that they can now see what’s going on on their Pages and tweak their content and advertising. They can also see if a post is performing poorly and then replace it if that’s the case.

The real-time Insights comes after Facebook overhauled Pages Insights in October with new metrics including People Talking About This, Friends of Fans and Weekly Total Reach. In addition, Facebook began offering a deeper dive into data around specific updates. Pages Insights now shows your last 500 posts (going back to last July) and tallies the total number of engaged users, People Talking About it and virality. The latter measures the percentage of users who commented on the post, though sentiment isn’t taken into account.

Facebook, which is prepping for its $5 billion IPO, has expanded its analytics in an attempt to curry favor with marketers with a range of new ad products and the addition of the long-awaited Timeline for Brand Pages this week. Researcher eMarketer last week issued a report stating that Google will outpace Facebook in display advertising revenues next year. Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer, told Bloomberg that Facebook still has to win over much of Corporate America. “It really comes down to brand advertisers,” she said. “They just need to do a better job of convincing the big advertisers that ads are effective and that they perform.”

Google also beat Facebook to the punch on real-time analytics, with the introduction of Google Analytics Real-Time in September.

via mashable.com