CMO Exclusive by Adobe Digital Index:

The results of a new study by Adobe Digital Index (ADI) may put marketers’ aggravation with Facebook’s constant–and very sudden–algorithm changes to rest.

The “Q1 2014 Social Intelligence Report” (PDF) indicates that Facebook still rules the roost when it comes to social media platforms—engagement is higher on Facebook than on any other platform and is on the rise.

ADI’s report looks at the effect social media has on brands from a paid, owned, and earned perspective. The analysis is based on 260 billion Facebook ad impressions, 226 billion Facebook post impressions, 17 billion referred visits from social networking sites, and 7 billion brand post interactions, including comments, likes, and shares.

“People are clicking through to the ads they are seeing,” said Joe Martin, a senior analyst at ADI. “Click-through rates are up year over year and quarter over quarter. The new Autoplay feature for video seems to be working, as well. There have been huge amounts of video plays, and engagement rates are up. Even though people have expressed frustration over the algorithm changes by Facebook, there’s good news in the data for brands.”

Facebook video plays are up a whopping 758 percent year over year (YoY). Engagement with video posts is up 25 percent YoY and up 58 percent quarter over quarter (QoQ).

Brands are also taking advantage of Facebook’s ad business, which is also growing. According to ADI, Facebook’s ad clicks increased 70 percent YoY and 48 percent QoQ, with ad impressions up 40 percent and 41 percent, respectively. And people are clearly clicking on the ads being served, given that Facebook’s ad click-through rate (CTR) jumped 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. Also notable: Clicks still outpace impressions on the platform.

ADI’s analysis also found that Fridays are the best-performing day of the week for social media. Consumers post more, like more, and comment more on that day. Additionally, 25 percent of videos played and 15.7 percent of impressions on Facebook take place on Friday. “That’s definitely when marketers should be planning to use their best content because that’s when you’ll get the most engagement,” Martin said.

Twitter (5 percent) and Facebook (11 percent) referred revenue-per-visitor (RPV) also increased in the first quarter. According to Martin, LinkedIn stood out with a 15 percent share of social traffic to B2B high-tech sites. Only Facebook drove more traffic (52 percent) to B2B high-tech sites in Q1.

“Facebook is back at the top of the mountain,” Martin said. “It was declining for some time, but now it’s at about 75 percent of retail referrer traffic, for example. All the other networks are still growing, but the majority of referring traffic is still attributed to Facebook. That means that Facebook’s adaptions for marketers are working.”