Leading Social Networks – November 2009
As companies fine tune marketing plans, an analysis of where marketing dollars are spent is an essential consideration. Advertising on social networking websites is one avenue to capture online sales through online ads.
According to The Nielsen Company, 2/3 of the global Internet population visit blogging or social networking Web sites. This accounts for nearly 10% of all time spent online.
CEO of Nielsen Online, John Burbank, stated, “Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience. While two-thirds of the global online population already accesses member community sites, their vigorous adoption and the migration of time show no signs of slowing.”
According the Heather Dougherty, Director of Research at Hitwise, holiday online shopping through social networks saw 10% of all US Internet visits for the last week of November 2009. Astute online marketers are taking advantage of online advertising on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to capture customers’ attention and ultimately sales through the holiday sales season. Stats reveal that Facebook received a downstream traffic to the “Retail 500” up 36% from the day before Thanksgiving and Twitter was up 15%.
With tight marketing budgets and the knowledge of top visited social networking stats available, an informed company can evaluate the cost verses return on investment further for advertising budgets. The top five U.S. social networks for week ending November 28, 2009 are topped off by Facebook, with MySpace, YouTube, Tagged and Twitter following respectively according to Hitwise.
The following pie chart illustrates the top five social networks as reported by Hitwise.
Tags: social networking ad potential, social networking advertising