Report: Facebook’s Promoted Posts Won’t Cannibalize Organic Reach (Even If They Are Terrible)

Last Spring, the launch of Facebook’s Promoted Posts launched, garnering mixed reviews from brands. Since launch, some speculation has been swirling that paying for promotion might hinder the organic reach of a brand. he thought process is that a promoted post that is lower in quality that may not be regularly shown to that user, thereby garnering more negative  feedback, lowering the overall organic reach metrics. Wisemetrics, a social analytics firm, performed a study to find out a that found that this is not the case.

In a study that analyzed 5,000 promoted posts from 1,500 pages Wisemetrics found no instance of organic cannibalization when a post was promoted. They analyzed the average organic traffic derived from promoted posts and compared with un-promoted posts. The results were nearly the exact same however there was a slight skew (a few hundred impressions) towards promoted posts seeing a higher organic reach.

While EdgeRank no longer exists, there is still the thought that a spammy promoted post may hinder the brand using the new 100k-rithim. Wisemetrics studied this as well, looking at those promoted posts that saw negative feedback during the promotion. When analyzing the 5% spammiest promoted posts, it was found that the organic reach wasn’t constrained.

So what does this mean? Well, firstly if promoted posts are working for you, promote away. Second, this study indicates that the promoted post views don’t have any impact on the overall Facebook algorithm. So, not only should you not expect to see an organic decrease on a bad post, but don’t expect a positive organic impact on a favorable promoted post.

Head over to Wisemetrics to see the full study.