According to Virtue, on average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year. The company's findings are based on impressions generated in the Facebook news feed, the stream of recent updates from users' networks.

My thoughts...

(1) Virtue's Study uses Impressions: Who in the world is using an old media metric, impressions, on new media and why would they be using an outdated metric ? This is what happens when you have too many MBA's, who like to quantify everything, on the payroll.

(2) Some brands' fans are far less valuable, especially if the fans do not pass on messages very often. Vitrue attributed that to the brands not being as sexy or compelling as other brands, with less access to their fans' news feed. eMarketer's own data shows that the number one reason people friend a brand on social media is to receive discounts with checking in on new products as second.

(3) On average, a fan base of 1 million translates into at least $3.6 million in equivalent media over a year. These findings are based on impressions generated in the Facebook news feed, the stream of recent updates from users' networks. Earth to Virtue...some brands know how to connect via social media but most brands do not. In fact, data suggests that over 75% of brands that use social media are going to fail.

Let's be honest here- the only reason to issue a press release like this is to grab attention to your company. This study is downright bad and does not take into account the real advantages of social media to move brands forward. But like I said, this is what happens with MBA marketers who want to quantify everything and don't have any common sense.