Indivigital recently published a report on the Facebook performance of leading brands. The Facebook study concluded the world’s top 100 brands have an average engagement rate of 0.12 percent (mean) and 0.02 percent (median). The average engagement rate with 74 outliers removed is 0.10 percent (mean).

What Did the Facebook Study Cover?

The report analyzes 29,047 Facebook posts made by the world’s top 100 brands between March 15, 2017 and March 15, 2018.

In terms of interactions, 72 percent of posts received between 0-100 shares, 84 percent of posts received between 0-100 comments, 34 percent of posts received between 0-100 likes, and 72 percent of posts received between 0-100 reactions.

The Netflix (US) page drove 1.7 million comments and 4.1 million shares and is the top-performing page for comments and shares over the time frame analyzed. Discovery meanwhile attracted more post likes than any other brand with outliers excluded (Lenovo is top with outliers included).

With an average engagement rate (mean) of 1.19 percent (“engagement” is defined as a comment, like, share, or reaction), Corona (Brazil) is the top-performing Facebook page analyzed, with outliers excluded. Citi is the top-performing brand page analyzed with outliers included, accounting for an average engagement rate (mean) of 2.61 percent.

Tesla, which recently deleted its Facebook presence, accounted for an average engagement rate (mean) of 0.18 percent and drove 485, 478 post likes over the time frame analyzed.

Other key findings include:

• “Fast food” is the top-performing sector overall with an average engagement rate (mean) of 0.42 percent.
• “Image” is the most frequently occurring post type accounting for 43 percent of all posts (video accounted for 38 percent) while video is the best-performing post type (accounting for 46.63 percent of total interactions).
• Brands with between 300,000 and 1 million fans performed best overall, with an average engagement rate (mean) of 0.22 percent including outliers and 0.20 percent excluding outliers.
• Brands with more than 5 million fans performed worst overall, with an average engagement rate (mean) of 0.07 percent including outliers and 0.05 percent excluding outliers.
• The pages which made less than 50 posts over the time frame analyzed performed best overall and accounted for an average engagement rate (mean) of 0.42 percent.

The study split the pages analyzed into two categories — “pages” and “pages and global/market pages” — dependent on whether the page utilizes Facebook’s global pages structure.

Global pages allow a brand to offer localized versions of its pages (what Facebook terms “market pages”) targeted to a local audience. Under this structure, Facebook aggregates page likes across market pages i.e. if a user likes Netflix (UK), then that like will be aggregated and displayed as a single value.

What Does This Mean?

This means the page-like value specified on that brand’s pages isn’t indicative of the number of likes from users who like that page. Rather, it indicates total page likes for all market pages employed by that brand.

For this reason, and for brands that utilize global pages, the study selected an active market page from a country with a large population to be representative of that brand. Page-like totals were then adjusted to account for the audience share of the local market page.

For brands that don’t utilize global pages, the study selected the most appropriate and active Facebook page for a brand.