Social media is no mirage, says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. Her company projects that 2010 will see continued growth of advertising spending on online social networking sites.
eMarketer forecasts that $2.5 billion will be spent on ads on online social networks worldwide in 2010, up 14 percent from the $2.2 billion spent in 2009. About $1.3 billion will be spent in the U.S. alone.
In 2008, $2.0 billion was spent on ads on these sites worldwide, a 61 percent increase from 2007. The company projects that this figure will reach $2.9 billion in 2011, which would be a 13 percent increase.
Approximately 64 percent of U.S. Internet users will interact with user-generated content in 2010, while 26 million U.S. adults will use Twitter at least once a month, according to eMarketer. Oh, and mobile social networks will reach 223 million people around the globe.
Williamson refers to eight separate surveys, with each showing that the majority of U.S. marketers are already using social media.
For example, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research indicates that 80.0 percent of marketers in the U.S. are using social media, a dramatic increase from 49.0 percent in 2008.
But with great spending comes great room for error, according to Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer. The “enormity of this opportunity leads many marketers to chase after every technique, tactic and metric that passes them by,” he said.
“Instead, marketers should focus on fewer but better-defined objectives—and remember that listening, establishing trust, adding value and projecting authenticity are among the best practices that are critical to their success with social media,” writes Williamson.
According to comScore’s “The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review,” Yahoo! Sites continued its reign as the top publisher of display ads from December 2008 to November 2009, with 521.2 billion impressions.
However, Fox Interactive Media, led by MySpace, was second on the list with 367.6 billion impressions, followed by Facebook with 329.6 billion impressions.
Microsoft Sites was fourth with 218.1 billion impressions, AOL was fifth with 192.2 billion impressions and Google Sites was sixth with 69.9 billion impressions.
eBay (36.4 billion), Glam Media (24.8 billion), Amazon Sites (21.7 billion) and United Online, Inc. (19.5 billion) rounded out the top 10 list, according to comScore.
Facebook recently took over the display ads on its site from Microsoft, which was a shift from their original deal in 2006. Microsoft will continue to handle text ads and is claiming that the search agreement with Facebook is being expanded.
Sources:</strong
Network
