Ad men
US marketers will splash over $3bn advertising on social networking sites in 2011, accounting for over 10 percent of the total online ad spend in the US, if predictions from eMarketer are to be believed.
The digital intelligence firm said 2011's growth in spending will make social media ad dollars reach 10.8 percent of the total spent online in the US, while elsewhere global social network spending will increase almost 72 percent to $5.97bn, accounting for 8.7 percent of total advertising spending.
The firm said that the 2011 forecast is a massive $1bn higher than its last estimate of US social network ad spend in August of last year. eMarketer believes the increase has been driven by Facebook, the largest player in the space with an audience of over 650m users.
Here is a chart of Social Network ad revenues from eMarketer.
Principal analyst at the firm, Debra Aho Williamson, said:"2010 was the year that Facebook firmly established itself as a major force not only in social network advertising but all of online advertising. In 2011, its global presence is something multinational advertisers can't ignore."
The firm predicted that ad spending on Facebook will top $2.19bn in the US in 2011 and over $4bn across the globe- that's apparently about double the amount of 2010.
Williamson said: "If Facebook can continue to increase its global user base and boost the amount of revenue it generates per user, it could even surpass these forecasts. Facebook must continue to innovate its user experience and its ad platform."
According to Advertising Age, Just like Google, most of Facebook's ad sales come from small and medium sized firms via the social network's self-serve ad system.
The magazine cited eMarketer's figures, which estimated that Facebook raked in $1.86bn in global ad revenue last year- an increase of 86 percent from the firm's presumed 2009 figures. The majority of advertising came from within the US.
Perhaps surprisingly, it is believed that 60 percent or $1.21bn of US Facebook ad spend was created by smaller firms last year and it is assumed that relatively few of them probably used a media agency, making self-serve tools a popular option.
Here is a chart of Facebook ad revenues from eMarketer.
