Social Network Advertisers Fall Short In Measuring Results
Just 24% of European internet advertisers who plan to launch their own profiles on social networking sites measure whether users interact with their online ads, according to a new report from JupiterResearch.
The Social Marketing in Europe: Creating and Measuring User Engagement report found that over the next year, 33% of European online advertisers plan to launch their own profiles on social networking sites.
In the report, JupiterResearch recommends a framework that will allow advertisers to easily and effectively measure their success in engaging users.
More than one-half of European online advertisers were found to have used tactics intended to increase user interaction, or “engagement,” in the last year.
Nearly two-thirds of online advertisers will use engagement tactics in the next year, said JupiterResearch. Although viral marketing campaigns will remain the most popular form of engagement marketing, advertisers’ use of tactics that engage users more deeply – such as profiles on social networking sites, and ads that encourage users to contribute photos and videos to advertisers’ web sites – will grow relatively more quickly.
Nate Elliott, senior analyst at JupiterResearch and lead author of the report, said: “With the large majority of European online advertisers planning to use engagement marketing tactics in the next year, it’s vital that the industry finds ways to cheaply and accurately measure the impact of these campaigns.
“As it stands, most European advertisers are jumping on the engagement marketing bandwagon without truly understanding which tactics represent the most appropriate and effective use of their marketing resources.”
“As marketers increasingly try to reach consumers through social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, as well as video sites like YouTube and DailyMotion, they should turn to their online ad agencies for help gauging the success of these efforts.
“In turn, agencies and ad servers must develop benchmarks and proxies to discover and prove the relationship between technology-based measurements and traditional brand impact surveys.”
A recent report from market analyst Datamonitor forecast that global active memberships in social networking sites to reach 230 million at the end of 2007.
Figures from Nielsen//NetRatings released at the end of September show that Facebook and MySpace are now both visited by one in five Britons online, receiving 6.5 million and 6.4 million unique users respectively in August.
JupiterResearch: www.jupiterresearch.com