Huge Jump in Advertisements on Facebook

Facebook is only a few hours away from making its public offering but already, there is plenty of evidence that shows how dominant and important this social networking platform truly is and can become within the next few years. A report, which was provided by comScore, stated that Facebook accounts for nearly 28 percent of all the United States advertisements that are displayed online within the past year of 2011. This share is much more than Yahoo is making, at 11 percent. It is also doing better than Microsoft and Google, both of which have just below 5 percent of the advertisement share.

In 2010, the share of advertisement on Facebook grew to about 21 percent. Over the same exact amount of time, the share of advertisement for Yahoo only grew by 0.1 percent which proves how important Facebook is for advertisers and for consumers alike.

Forecasters have also predicted that the share for Facebook will actually grow again, proving how important social media is for advertisers who are looking to advertise for brands and companies and once tried to stay away from social media websites.

The growth for Facebook will be unbelievably explosive within just the next few years. A local media research company has even made prediction that the advertisement spending on social media sites in the United States will increase by billions of dollars, reaching $8.3 billion in 2015. And, most of that will come from advertisements featured on Facebook alone.

Twitter and LinkedIn are both working on growing their advertising shares; Facebook is still taking the lead and accounts for the majority of social media advertisement revenue. It is expected that Facebook doesn’t have much to worry about as it will continue to account for the majority of the social media advertisement revenue for years to come. And, advertisers enjoy being able to advertise on social media sites because it allow them to target specific consumers.

Jed Williams, the analyst and program director of BIA/Kelsey’s Social Local Media practice, has said, “I think one of the biggest things advertisers can leverage through social is multiple levels of targeting. Not just geo-targeting or contextual targeting or behavioral targeting, it’s all of these things at the same time.” He also says, “I believe this is the biggest reason Facebook’s valuation is what it is. It’s not just the volume of data, it’s the personalization of that data. They have access to a social graph for each person on the platform. Now it’s about leveraging that appropriately.”

Facebook is definitely dominant when it comes to advertisements online and forecasters predict that this is something that will continue for Facebook for years to come. Most analysts believe that the company is valued at nearly $100 billion.