eMarketer has published new findings regarding advertisers on social networks and revised their projections for ad spending on social sites.
“In 2008, companies will spend $1.2 billion on US social network advertising, down 14% from our previous estimate of $1.4 billion, published in May 2008,” says Ms. Williamson. “Even in 2009, spending will rise barely $100 million to $1.3 billion.” -Social Networks: Millions of Users, Not So Many Marketers
The way I see it, the problem is the way in which advertisers are going about getting in front of surfers who are spending more and more time on social sites. They are advertising with banners, videos, and all the other interruption marketing of the past.
Not surprisingly, they are getting lower returns than expected. It comes from a lack of understanding of social networking. Social sites are not traditional websites. People are there for a specific purpose and do not want the distraction of clicking ads.
Surfers are actually doing something on these networks and they visit to accomplish certain tasks that they do not want to be pulled away from. When your ad is up against a new message from a friend or colleague that your target wants to respond to, the friend is going to win 99% of the time.
Guess what? That “friend” who is pulling your prospect away from your ad might just be a marketer!
They’ve built a relationship of sorts with the person you want so badly to click on your ad and they are winning the attention game.
What traditional marketers fail to understand is that the action in social networks, where all the customers are, is in the actual use of the networks to build virtual relationships and followers. And this is done through genuine communication rather than pesky intrusions on surfers’ valuable time.
The fleet-of-foot small marketers are getting this. The big business-as-usual companies are continually mystified by the difference, or that there is any difference at all.
