GLOBAL – MAY 2011 – As users’ time spent on social media sites rises, innovations and opportunities for efficient and effective advertising spark interests from advertisers. No doubt, social media advertising—ads solely focused on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendster and YouTube–is exploding.
An advantage of advertising in social networking sites is that advertisers can make use of their target audience’s demographic information and hence, target the ad directly towards them. Like other online advertising, networking sites also allow you to set a budget and control spending on display ads.
Recently, BIA/Kelsey U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast reported that social media advertising revenues topped $2 billion in 2010. Furthermore, the group expects that by 2015 it will rise to $8.3 billion. The research company stated that the predominant ad format on social networks is display, from which the firm expects an increase in revenue from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $7.7 billion in 2015.
Facebook, the largest social networking site, dominates most of the revenues earned from social media advertising. Jed Williams, analyst and program director of BIA/Kelsey’s Social Local Media Practice, said, "It’s no surprise that Facebook commands a dominant share of all social ad impressions served and ad revenues generated. As the social market leader, it already serves the most display ad impressions of any digital company, surpassing both Yahoo and Google. We fully expect Facebook to increase both impression share and ad revenue, as buyer awareness accelerates and creative formatting and targeting improve to optimize performance."
