Originally Published Winter 2020
Regular readers of the old Excapite blog will recall that in 2011 I proposed a new Facebook metric. Average Revenue per Minute of User Engagement or ARPMOE.
It was picked up by Chris Dixon at the time and gained a moment of popularity in VC circles
You will find the original post archived here : A new Facebook experience needs a new Facebook metric.
5 years later we revisited the numbers and discovered Facebook was well on the way to being on par with Free to Air Broadcast TV - at least in its premium market in the USA
The TikTok numbers published on Twitter by Jon Sakoda for evaluating the Microsoft acquisition bid presents us with the opportunity to revisit the question
Note: The numbers published by Jon reflect US engagement
The first thing you will notice is how Instagram outperforms the rest of the Social Media market. Placing it in the premium category normally reserved for flagship television programs (Think: Superbowl)
The second thing you will notice is Facebook is closing in on parity with broadcast TV
The third thing you will notice is TikTok looks like Facebook the year Microsoft invested in the social network
Finally the cost of engagement has risen to the point where we can now display the ARPU values in hours - rather than minutes
In retrospect the original forecasts for Facebook's ARPUMOE proved accurate and today, although still short of the US TV average and Yahoo! circa 2010, the original Facebook network now generates the same ARPMOE as Yahoo! circa 2000