Why social advertising will win

Last week, news broke that social media advertising had surpassed search and would soon overtake display as the area of highest media spending among advertisers in the United States.

Some people might be surprised, but we’re simply wondering what took so long. Social advertising offers several key benefits that make it an especially smart choice for advertisers who want to maximize the ROI of their media buys. It’s about time marketers took notice! Here are just a few of the reasons we love social advertising:

• Narrow targeting – When we sign up to use a social network, we typically provide a good deal of information about ourselves to the site. For example, we might tell Facebook how old we are, where we went to school and what we like to do in our free time (by filling out the hobbies section). Social networks can then turn this data into filters through which advertisers can target their ads. Want to reach only self-proclaimed fly fishing aficionados in the Pacific Northwest or newly engaged 22–30 year olds in Illinois? Facebook makes it possible. Other social networks are also targeting their ads in similar ways based on intelligence about their users.
• Relevance – The amount of personal information we share with the social networks we use also allows the sites to serve us highly relevant ads. For example, after changing my status from “Student at The University of Wisconsin,” to “Alumni of The University of Wisconsin,” Facebook began serving me ads for a variety of companies that were hiring in Wisconsin and the Midwest.
• Shareability – Social ads are viral by nature. Let’s take Twitter’s promoted tweets as an example. When a company sends a promoted tweet, it shows up within a user’s stream as if it was sent from one of their friends or connections. The user then has the ability to retweet the promoted tweet to their followers, and greatly increase the reach of the message. Well-crafted promoted tweets from major companies have reportedly been retweeted upwards of 18,000 times.

As social media sites grow, their advertising platforms are likely to become even more advanced. We can’t wait to see what’s next. Have you made social media a key component of your media plan for 2012?