We all know that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are daily destinations for millions of people.
Great thing about marketing on those networks is that their ad products offer targeting according to specific demographics, social connections, interests, and habits.
As brands look across a fractured media landscape, where few digital properties offer any scale, social networks offer them an interesting proposition.
BusinessInsider.com did the analyze of social media advertising and where it is heading.
Here's an overview of some of the most interesting facts about social media advertising:
Social media advertising offers a potentially unique advertising opportunity
As brands look across a fractured media landscape, social networks offer them an interesting proposition. Social networks have scale - enormous user bases and deep databases. For example, if you know that Americans were spending an average of 12 hours per month on social networks as of July 2012, with 18-24 year olds averaging 20 hours, then you realize which power this kind of marketing can bring.
Even conservative estimates predict huge growth
BIA/Kelsey recently came out with a study that offers one view - forecasting $11 billion of social ad spend in 2017! Just to note, last year it was $4.7 billion. Social media advertising is a young and growing market, and that's for sure. So far, it only represents 1% to 10% of ad budgets for a wide majority of advertisers. There's significant opportunity for that share to grow.
Increased mobile usage will be a huge growth driver
Both Twitter and Facebook have passed the 50% mobile usage mark and with the continued growth of mobile devices, it will obviously only rise. Mobile accounted for 11% of Facebook's ad revenue last year even though it didn't release mobile ads until the tail end of the second quarter. By the fourth quarter, it was up to 23%. And now, Twitter is reporting that its mobile ad revenue now regularly outpaces its desktop ad revenue.
According to social ad optimization platform TBG, Facebook's mobile ads have the highest click-through rates by a substantial margin. Furthermore, native in-stream ads are perfectly transferable across devices, whereas display ads can have issues on a smaller screen.
The BIA/Kelsey prediction calls for mobile to account for only $2.2 billion of that in 2017 - a 20% market share. It seems highly unlikely that mobile will account for only 20% of the social ad market come 2017, especially as usage habits continue to change.
Source: BusinessInsider.com