Data Points: Brand Fans

We're increasingly friending brands on Facebook—the average consumer has 29 brand friends on social networking sites, up from just seven a year ago. But that doesn't necessarily mean we're spending time with them. Less than half of us (39 percent) interact with brands regularly or all the time, with the rest doing so occasionally (33 percent) or hardly/never (28 percent), according to the latest edition of The Curve Report from NBCUniversal Integrated Media. Clearly, brands could stand to do more to keep consumers interested; the chief reason given by people who don't engage with brands on social networks is that they only "like" brands to get a deal they're offering.