Tag Archives: Online Advertising

Social Media Advertising: Twitter Vs Facebook

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UK advertising agencies are always on the look out for the best and most cost affective way to attract customers to their clients products. For decades this has included TV adverts, leaflet drops, press ads and billboard campaigns. Increasingly these days online advertising is being used with social media, a popular and effective choice. For a while now social media has been pretty much confined to the internet colossus of Facebook but now another popular social site is trying to take a slice of the millions of advertising dollars spent on this sector every year. Twitter has recently unveiled a number of advertising opportunities it hopes will attract advertisers to its site.

The popular site, which is used by 175 million users, has three main methods of advertising, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.

  • Promotion Tweets allow you to post tweets that can be seen by people who don’t follow you.
  • Promoted Accounts will show up in a user’s “Who to Follow” section on their Twitter homepage.
  • Promoted Trends allows a company to place their product on top of the Twitter Trending List

Facebook, which has 550 million users, offers two methods of advertising, Facebook adverts and Facebook ‘like’ adverts.

  • Facebook adverts appear on the right hand side of the screen using text and pictures, they link to a client’s website.
  • Facebook ‘like’ adverts encourage users to like a company’s page in order to receive information, updates and promotion offers from that company.

While Twitter has been trying hard with their new promotional opportunities Facebook still remains the best opportunity for advertisers.  Facebook not only reaches many more people than Twitter but it remains the most cost effective choice thanks to its PPC style advertising.

Facebooks advertising revenue to reach £1bn

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Facebook has just released a forecast for its advertising revenue for next year that cites the company will make just over 1 billion pounds.  Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and several of his college roommates whilst studying at Harvard University and has seen its popularity increase over the past few years immensely.

People could be wrong in thinking that this will be a trend within the online advertising market as other companies such as MySpace have unfortunately reported 14% shrinkage in their advertising revenues.

Facebook now has over 500 million users globally and relies on 65% of its revenue from the US. It is very big news that it has now dwarfed its rival MySpace that is currently owned by Rupert Murdoch’s news corporation. With advertising profits rising by 165% since 2009 the company is set to soar even further over time and reach its own goal of 1 billion users in the near future.

Most of Facebooks revenue is served by its advertising partner Microsoft in the form of Banner advertising.  Facebook has a much lower click through rate than many other large websites but is still extremely successful and used by many UK advertising agencies.

One of its reasoning’s for its low click through rate is its reckoning that many of its users are very young and technically minded and in turn use advert blockers to bypass adverts.  It has been reported that some adverts used within Facebooks wall posts have had click through rates as high as 6.49%, which is one of the reasons as a Direct Response Advertising Agency there is no better time to start using social website Marketing.

Advertising News 2009

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Whilst advertising in 2009 as a whole has been down on 2008 there have been successes across the board with digital and online advertising continuing to grow and become more competitive. The war of the Internet Search Engines began with Microsoft’s Bing launching globally in June, much to Google’s annoyance. They have teamed up with Yahoo and now have a Market share of 10%, Google is a little worried and has launched its first ever global advertising campaign. The question is will people be coining the new phrase ‘I binged it’ in the new decade?

Internet advertising has been the most innovative marketing medium in 2009 which is supported by the Internet Advertising Bureau (LAB) reporting that it had grown by 4.6% in the first half of 2009, overtaking television spend for the first time ever. Now more than ever people should be looking at utilising the Internet for their marketing and many UK Advertising Agencies are fully equipped to manage campaigns as paid for searches continue to grow and be in demand.

The mobile phone market is also driving innovation in marketing with 2009 being another strong year. In June, consumers camped outside O2 stores across England to get their hands on Apple’s 3G iPhone, a launch which secured a 40% share of the smartphone market. The future for mobiles look set to get bigger and bigger and the medium is now accounts for 11.7% of ad spend.

TV has struggled this year but with shows like X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and Britain’s Got Talent, TV advertising revenues will be up by 4% year on year this month. The BBC has been suffering with their networks and need to find £75 million in order to kick start its cost cutting programme for the next five years. Whilst Channel four has signed a ground breaking deal with YouTube this year which will make the broadcasters programmes available on demand, in full and free of charge via the video sharing website.

With these new avenues of marketing looking set to grow and continue to be fiercer in competition who knows what other ground breaking deals, new innovations and jaw dropping tactics will be used in 2010 by search engines, phone companies and direct response advertising . Watch this space.

Can Social Networking be the future of Online Advertising?

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Companies who are looking to social marketing as the future of online advertising may have to rewrite their plans after the latest IDC reports confirmed that advertising through the medium has not become as popular as hoped.

The recent survey has discovered that although over 60% of social network users spend an average of half an hour using the site at a time, that advertising on these sites receive less attention than other forms adverts made by a full service advertising agency.

IDC also confirmed that the conversion rates are lower for sites like Facebook and Myspace, yet traditional internet advertising still flourish. Interestingly the social networking sites are doing better for click through rates yet stumbling when it comes to completing a sale or purchase.

Approximately 7% of traditional advertising users clicked through before 23% making a purchase. In comparison the social networking sites have received clicks from 57% of users with only 11% going on to make a purchase. This maybe deemed as a problem but what is better, 23% of 7% or 11% of 57%? Maybe social advertising isn’t as bad after all?

Another interesting report this week showed that (out of children surveyed) 100% of children between the age of 12 and 14 have access to the internet. Something that possibly shows that online advertising is the future.

Online advertising strategies prove to be cost effective

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Online based advertisements have become very popular with internet marketers and advertising agencies down to the fact that their usefulness is easy to track. The editor in chief for E Consultancy, Chris Lake believes that companies can follow a click on one of their adverts or if a phrase has been entered on Google, Yahoo or MSN should they want too.

In today’s cautionary financial climate advertising companies are being urged to consider putting more money into their online advertising strategies if they want to get the most out of their money. These methods are a lot easier to maintain and keep an eye on in comparison to more traditional versions of advertising.

This is understandable considering the fingers crossed mentality that is known with magazine, newspaper or print advertisements. How can you really be sure how popular one of those adverts has been? There is no page view data or sale rates with a print advert after all. One of the great things about online marketing is that any sort of company can access it be it a recruitment advertising agency, a well known brand or a art gallery the sky is the limit.

Mr Lake later concluded that “In a recessionary climate, we’ve got much more focus on proving return on investment. That’s pretty much why the internet has taken off in terms of advertising, because of measurability.”

It is also interesting to know that out of all forms of advertising, internet marketing was the only form to see an increase in spending over the third quarter of 2008.

Online Advertising breaks the £3bn threshold!

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The costs of online advertising have risen over the £3bn mark in the UK for the first time ever last year. This rise in online advertising has hit more traditional versions of media hard, grabbing the market share from newspapers, magazines and postal mail.

Advertising expenditure across all forms of media rose 4.2% to £19.4bn last year in the UK, according to the World Advertising Research Centre and the Advertising Association

The cinema, outdoor and online advertising sectors made the largest year on year increase with online expenditure up by a massive 39.5%. Online advertising accounted for 16% of the total UK advertising spend in 2007.

Experts have recently stated that advertisers are turning online from other areas of media like postal mail and print. The stats seem to back up the ideas showing that press advertising including newspapers and magazine adverts declining with a 1.6% loss in the last year.

Press however is still the top single sector accounting for 40% in the UK and spent £7.7bn in 2007 on advertising. Postal mail advertising dropped by 6.5% bringing in £2.17bn.

Cinema advertising in the UK rose by 10.1% in year on year growth but the overall market was worth only £207 million, 1.1% of the advertising market in the UK. Outdoor advertising rose by 4.6% making just over £1bn, giving outdoor ads a 5.5% market share. The television sector grew by only 2.3% making £4.67bn, although the growth percentage was disappointing the sector still accounts for 24% of all advertisement spending in the UK.