Social Network Advertising

Social Networking is one of the most active, online activities. People love to chat with friends and update their profiles to reflect their ‘to-the-minute’ state of being! This is a great place to advertise, and more emphasis has been placed on targeting this very active segment of the internet population. Word of mouth marketing can be viral in social networks and ads my be more effective because people are usually relaxed and ready to click and browse when they are social networking.

excerpts from eMarketer
Is Social Network Advertising Ready for Primetime?

As a result of the poor economy and various difficulties at MySpace, paid advertising on online social networks in the US is expected to fall 3% in 2009.
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eMarketer projects that US marketers will increase their social network ad spending 13.2% in 2010, to $1.3 billion.
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While the US accounts for the majority of ad spending on MySpace and Facebook, non-US spending is growing rapidly at Facebook. eMarketer estimates that marketers will spend a total of $520 million to advertise on MySpace worldwide in 2009, down 14% from 2008. Worldwide spending on Facebook, by contrast, is expected to grow 20%, to $300 million, in 2009.
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“Regardless of which site is in the lead, 2009 is the year of building social marketing strategy,” says Ms. Williamson. “2010 and beyond will see increased activity and deployments.”

Social network users create a gigantic amount of data about themselves—their friend networks, likes and dislikes, content-sharing activities and more.

“Harnessing this information to deliver advertising not only within social networks, but on other sites a consumer may visit, is a marketer’s dream come true,” says Ms. Williamson.