As you already know, marketing space on Facebook is one of the hottest things going right now. People are engaged in all sorts of activities on Facebook; they send gifts, share photos, search for coupons, and yes, research products and brands. A new study by Socialbakers research has set out to nail down people’s advertising and brand viewing habits on Facebook. Because there’s big dollars involved, it’s a highly relevant and interesting effort.

So what’s the most popular thing going on Facebook as far as brands go? Automobiles, and more specifically BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, Audi, and Ford Mustang. How many people who are fans of these pages can actually afford their products? Five, but that’s not the story here. These are the most engaging brands according to sheer number of fans.

Take a look at the results overall:

Surprisingly, alcohol products are the next most popular category of engaging brands as ranked by number of fans on pages. Probably the only thing to do after realizing you can’t afford a Ferrari or high-end Beamer is to get drunk and forget your worries. After all, the V6 Mustang might just be within your reach.

I guess the overall point is that these rankings are according to fans of pages not necessarily people who purchase the products. I could spend some time drooling over the latest Ferrari and eyeing up the latest innovations from BMW, but I probably won’t be buying anytime soon. So what about sales?

The average engagement rate, or daily page engagement rates might be something more highly associated with sales or conversion. Both of these metric take into account total fans, likes, number of comments, and shares. These activities are a better indicator of intent to purchase. Learn more by clicking here.

So while I may love BMW and Heineken, what I’m really buying when I go out and shop are products more like Friskies cat food, Hellman’s mayonnaise, and Rhino energy drinks. These are products I actually consume, not admire at a distance. In fact, the alcohol fans may actually buy those in contrast to the automobiles, but let’s be honest, a bottle of Jack Daniels is great, but many may pass it over for a more cost effective solution.

Who knows? You may want to explore the study from Socialbakers a little more, there’s a lot of information there and if you follow the link you can learn a lot more about brand engagement and they break it down by industry. They include fashion, media, electronics, telecom, and even airlines in the study, so it’s worth taking a closer look at.

Like I said, engagement doesn’t equal sales, but it is still an indicator in interest in your products. It can’t ever hurt to have a presence on Facebook, but I don’t know that it will help sales for certain brands.