Recent reports have suggested that Facebook?s (FB) monetization (i.e., ad revenue per user) is materially greater than Twitter?s (TWTR), which suggests that FB may not have as much upside in monetization as one of its closest comps.
The report has not considered an important variable ? the relative differences in engagement (i.e., time spent), which directly impacts the available ad inventory (i.e., monetization potential). When engagement is taken into account (e.g., avg. feed views per month of 210 for Twitter users vs. 950 for FB), we estimate that FB?s monetization is actually 50-60% less than Twitter (not 100% greater as some have reported).
In the case of FB and TWTR, the differences today are significant. Using both time spent data from comScore and our own method for comparing avg feed views per user, we estimate that TWTR?s ad monetization per user ($0.53/Feed View/Month and $1.84/Mins Spent/Month) is actually 2-3x greater than FB?s ($0.23 and $0.63, resp.).
