Social Media is the New Standard for Emerging Online Advertising

This blog is about the cutting edge of technology and social media. It is often overlooked by the social media experts who are just now approaching the cutting edge. I’ve seen that the best social media consultants just don’t understand what social media is? To fully understand social media you have to look at the trends within Internet Infrastructure side of web 2.0 – collaborative filtering, software search tools, viral sharing, measurement. Most social media experts come from a PR background – not that there is anything wrong with that. I have yet to meet a PR person who can really nail the value of social media.

Forget all about that infrastructure stuff for now – just look at the numbers. Alternative media is growing fast. source:adage

Alternative media or emerging media or social media is fast becoming the standard in online advertising. Why? Because Web2.0 is about connected relationships with channels of abundant content that is fully measurable.

What the web page was to web1.0 social media is to web2.0.

The numbers are behind it. Below are the highlights from AdAge.

Spending on alternative media hit $73.43 billion in 2007, a 22% increase over the previous year, and will continue to grow, according to PQ Media’s Alternative Media Forecast: 2008-2012, released today. The research firm tracked 18 digital and nontraditional segments, with a combined 16.1% of total advertising and marketing dollars in 2007, up from 7.9% in 2002, yielding a compound annual growth rate of 21.7%.

The forecast predicts a 20.2% increase over the next year, to a total of $88.24 billion, and a compounded annual growth rate of 17% for 2007-2012, reaching $160.82 billion. By then, alternative media will represent 26.6% of all advertising and marketing dollars.

The upswing is as much a result of the effectiveness of new media in a fragmented market as it is from a lack of confidence in traditional media, said PQ Media President Patrick Quinn. “Traditional ad budgets have been going down, but spending has remained stable. This shows where the money is going,” Mr. Quinn said.
Alternative advertising, including online, mobile, entertainment and digital out-of-home advertising, saw spending rise at a compounded annual growth rate 25.8% to $39.22 billion in 2007, accounting for 17.7% of all ad spending that year (compared with 7% of all ad spending in 2002), and grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 26.2% from 2002 to 2007.

Online and mobile advertising spending –including search and lead generation, online classifieds and displays, e-media, online video and rich media, internet yellow pages, consumer-generated ads, and mobile advertising — reached $29.94 billion in 2007 (up 29.1% compared with 2006), a compounded annual growth rate of 31.4% over the 2002-2007 period. The category received heavy infusions from brand marketers trying to reach key demographics that have migrated online and to wireless thanks to wider broadband adoption.

Entertainment and digital out-of-home advertising — including local pay TV, digital out-of-home media, video on demand, interactive TV, and digital video recorder, video game, home video and satellite radio advertising — increased at a compounded annual growth rate of 15% from 2002-2007, and rose 16.2% over the previous year to $9.28 billion in 2007. The growth was driven by rising adoption of entertainment technologies, including ad insertion technologies and ad platforms to reach young audiences.

Alternative marketing — including branded entertainment and interactive marketing — hit $34.21 billion in 2007, a 17.9% rise over the previous year, and grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17.5% from 2002-2007. This brings its share of total marketing expenditures up to 14.5% in 2007, compared with 8.7% of total spending in 2002.

Branded-entertainment marketing — including event sponsorship and marketing, paid product placement, advergaming and webisodes — also saw and increase of 14.7% to $22.30 billion last year, and climbed at a slower compounded annual growth rate of 13.4% from 2002-2007.

The deployment of new-media strategies focusing on better interactivity, entertainment and engagement than traditional media was the driving factor.

Thanks to strong gains in segments that reach affluent and influential consumers, interactive marketing — including e-direct marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and e-custom publishing — saw big increases in 2007 of 24.4%, reaching $11.9 billion, compared with the previous year, and a compounded annual growth rate of 28.6% over the 2002-07 period.

Say hello to social media and the upcoming engagement metric.

Online Advertising Slowing? Just More Money – Expect New Products in Social Networks

New data is out confirming that online ads are growing.  Many people are looking at a potential online advertising recession. NOT. In fact more money is going into online ads then ever before. It’s recession proof.  Last week Forrester came out with research confirming it. Now IDC has data confirming this online ad growth trend.

The real story is that Google is losing share *and* the ad formats are changing. In discussing the company’s latest quarterly report about Internet advertising, IDC analyst Karsten Weide said businesses affected by the slowing U.S. economy will slash other advertising budgets before paring their online campaigns. “We think there will be some effect on ad spending overall, but we think online ad spending will almost be unaffected even if there’s a depression,” he said.

For the first time ever, IDC’s research found Google actually lost a bit of market share. “Their domestic sales growth has slowed down,” the analyst said. CPM based ads are dying giving way to Microcontent and social network ads.Look for new standards to come from online advertising groups like the Association of Downloadable Media (ADM).

Big Picture: Ads dollars are coming from Broadcast and Print sectors. The money has to flow somewhere and it will be online. Expect video advertising to dominate the big dollars.

No recession here only expansion.

Social Media Social Advertising – The Next Boom in Online Advertising

Forrester just put up a free report on why social media and advertising will survive a recession. It’s a must read for all online marketing executives.  Last month, Adweek had a short article on this topic.   I was quoted in there. 

Here is my quote from AdWeek:  “I don’t think we’ll see a marketing recession with online ads. The cost benefits and ROI are too compelling. It’s recession-proof.” —John Furrier, founder, PodTech Network, Palo Alto, Calif.

With Social media costs are dropping and the yield is increasing.  I’ve been directly involved in developing social media products for three years and can tell you with conviction that social media works.  

Bottom Line:  Forrester got it right.   They have some great suggestions. 

The Bad News:  metrics are very manual at his point so scalable metrics really don’t exist out there.  However, there are folks out there who know how to interpret the current set of data that is available. 

Good news:   metrics are coming. 

My advice to marketers:  if a vendor can’t coherently articulate to you what the appropriate metric variables are..then run for the hills.  Or just call me I know some good folks out there.

Marketers Note: If you’re reading this for the first time you should know that I’m biased toward Microcontent based social media and social advertising.  In my opinion Microcontent has the highest yield to cost benefits out on the market today *and* the distribution capabilities are viable and getting stronger everyday (e.g. widgets..etc).