Photo obtained via biojobblog.com
Following one of Dave Allen’s recent Tweets – over to his agency’s blog, Social Cache, he confirms what many of us in the advertising and marketing worlds have been suspecting…that consumers are paying very little, if any attention to advertising while using social networking platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others. Here’s what he said:
eMarketer has just confirmed our suspicions with its recent report that social networkers frequent sites like Myspace and Facebook to communicate with each other, not with brands.
More than one half of the U.S. population uses social networking sites, yet massive ad revenues have yet to materialize. Selling ad space on social networking sites was already an uphill battle before the economic downturn, but now it’s getting even more difficult. While 79% of all internet consumers have clicked on an advertisement in the past year, only 57% of those frequenting social networking sites have done so.
Barak Rabinowitz has described the challenge of monetizing social networks as the “elephant in the room” of online advertising. He claims that “It’s 400 million social networkers creating and consuming content, clustering around shared interests and activities—all who have yet to be tapped in any major way by Web marketers.”
With a deepening recession and millions of social networkers avoiding online ads by all means possible, what is the answer? How will these sites continue to remain in business if the ad dollars don’t start flowing?
How this affects the music biz is yet to be seen – but it certainly doesn’t bode well for anyone who is selling, pitching or doing anything other than, well, social networking.
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My view of the web is one almost completely without adds. I use Adblock Plus on Firefox, so they are just not there. This is a pretty big phenomenon which I am sure is causing heartburn among purveyors of online advertising