Social networks like
As brands look across a fractured media landscape, where few digital properties offer any scale, social networks offer them an interesting proposition. Forecasts call for over $10 billion in annual
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we analyze the state of social media advertising and where it is heading, offering a comprehensive guide and examination of the advertising ecosystems on Facebook and Twitter, offer a primer on
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Here's an overview of some major players in the
- 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. And they have high engagement and desirable demographics - 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.
- 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, up from $4.7 billion last year. Social media advertising is a young and growing market and, 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, given the continued growth of mobile devices, it will 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. - As in-stream advertising, easily transferable across devices, drive the change: 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.
In full, the report includes: