A new report from eMarketer has predicted growth of 17.3% for global spending on social media advertising in 2009.
Marketers are forecast to invest $2.35 billion (£1.64 billion) on ads on social networking sites by the end of 2009, with this figure rising to $3.49 billion over the next four years.
Although these figures are lower than previous estimates, eMarketer senior analyst and report author Debra Aho Williamson said that the social media sector is likely to see significant growth in a number of markets.
She said: “In markets such as China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, some social networks have built growing revenue streams from selling virtual items to members.
Member communities – a category including social networks and blogs – has become the fourth most popular category online, visited by over two-thirds (67%) of the global online population according to recent research by Nielsen (see Social networks and blogs increase in popularity).
According to the Nielsen report, Facebook is visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking use. Facebook has its greatest reach in the UK market (47%). Orkut in Brazil has the largest domestic online reach (70%) of any social network in these markets.
At the start of the year, the IPA released its second future of advertising report, which said that advertisers need to get to grips with social networking and the changing marketplace (see IPA: Social Networking Revolution).
