STUDY: 35 Percent Of Social Network Users Do Nothing When Their Friends Like Brands

A total of 57 percent of social media users in the U.S. have liked their favorite brands, but when asked what impact their friends’ likes had on them, the most common answer (35 percent) was none, according to new study by Adobe on the state of online advertising.

The majority of respondents in South Korea (59 percent) and Australia (54 percent) also said they liked their favorite brands, while the other countries examined by Adobe fell below the 50 percent mark: the U.K. (44 percent), France (38 percent), Japan (36 percent), and Germany (33 percent).

When users in the U.S. were asked why they liked brands on social media, the most common answer, at 53 percent, was that they regularly buy that brand’s products or services, followed by:

• Promotions, 46 percent
• What the brand stands for, 39 percent
• Brand’s style and personality, 38 percent
• Desire to buy its products or services, 17 percent
• Urged to like by the brand itself, 13 percent
• Know someone who works at the company, 7 percent
• Friends liked the brand, 5 percent.

When looking at the other countries Adobe studied, only 12 percent of South Koreans liked brands because they regularly buy their products and services, while just 14 percent of Japanese respondents were drawn by promotions, but 49 percent of Japanese respondents said they like brands because they aspire to make purchases from them.

As stated earlier, 35 percent of U.S. respondents said seeing that their friends liked brands on social networks had no impact on them, and that was followed by:

• Check out the product, 29 percent
• I do not visit social networking sites, 20 percent
• Visit the product’s website, 14 percent
• Visit the product’s social media page, 11 percent
• Other, 6 percent
• Comment on the product, 4 percent
• Hide that person from News Feed, 2 percent
• Recommend the product to others, 2 percent
• Purchase the product, 2 percent
• Defriend that person, 1 percent

Those figures were relatively consistent across the other countries in the study, with 39 percent of South Koreans saying they would check out the product, and 10 percent saying they would like the product, while 34 percent of respondents in France claimed to not visit social networking sites.

Digital advertising as a whole did not fare well in Adobe’s study, with 32 percent of respondents saying that online advertising is not effective, and 49 percent panning banner ads, in particular.

Adobe Chief Marketing Officer Ann Lewnes said:

Digital marketing has created a remarkable opportunity, but it comes with higher expectations from consumers. They expect a story tailored specially for them, a level of trust and transparency with the brands they do business with, and, most important, a great experience. Brands delivering anything less will ultimately be ignored. These survey results demonstrate that we aren’t quite delivering on digital marketing’s full potential yet. We now have the technology and know-how to target relevant and personalized marketing messaging and media to our customers. 

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