Nielsen: 33% Find Ads on Social Networking Sites Especially Annoying, Pinterest Exploding

Nielsen recently published “State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012,” a whopper of a recap of all things social media from the past year.

Among the many interesting findings in the report is that a third of people say ads on social networking sites are more annoying than other online ads. Also, Asian consumers are the most likely to take actions after seeing ads on social networks. Oh, and Pinterest? It’s doing just fine.

Social media ads
According to Nielsen, 33 percent of people in the U.S. agree that ads on social networking sites are more annoying than other online ads. Additionally, 26 percent say they’re OK with ads on social networking sites that are targeted based on their profile information, while 26 percent say they’re more likely to pay attention to an ad on a social network that has been posted by one of their friends on the site. Seventeen percent say they feel more connected to brands seen on social networking sites.

Overall, 15 percent of social media users shared an ad seen on a social networking site after seeing it, while 26 percent liked the ad and 14 percent purchased products. Asian consumers exhibited the highest activity in each of these actions taken after seeing a social ad (26 percent, 41 percent and 31 percent, respectively).

Meanwhile, 18 percent of consumers say they’ve purchased or obtained a coupon via daily-deals sites, retailers, etc., after seeing a social ad. This number is 28 percent for Asian consumers, 18 percent for African-American consumers, 16 percent for white consumers and 19 percent for Hispanic consumers.

A recent BIA/Kelsey report projects U.S. social media ad revenues to hit $9.2 billion in 2016, twice the revenue of $4.6 billion this year. The company expects the local segment of these social media ad revenues to reach $3.0 billion in 2016, nearly three times the $1.1 billion in 2012.

Social networking continues to go mobile
According to Nielsen, 34 percent of time spent on social networking sites comes via apps, while 61 percent comes from PCs and 5 percent comes from the mobile Web.

In July, there were 171.8 million unique social media users in the U.S., up 5.0 percent from the 163.6 million users in July 2011.

Nielsen found that this past July, users spent 121.1 billion minutes on social networking sites