This article was published on May 15, 2012

Social media ad spending in the US to reach $9.8 billion by 2016: Report


Social media ad spending in the US to reach $9.8 billion by 2016: Report
Robin Wauters
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Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of The Next Web. He describes himself as a hopeless cyberflâneur, a lover of startups, his family a Robin Wauters is the European Editor of The Next Web. He describes himself as a hopeless cyberflâneur, a lover of startups, his family and Belgian beer. If you'd like to know more about Robin, head on over to robinwauters.com or follow him on Twitter.

That spending on social media advertising is on the rise should be a surprise to absolutely no one, but research firm BIA/Kelsey is putting a ring number on it.

In the United States, BIA/Kelsey says, ad spending on social networks is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent, reaching $9.8 billion by 2016 (up from from $3.8 billion in 2011).

Almost all of this ($9.2 billion) will go to display ads, the firm goes on.

BIA/Kelsey (which advises companies in the local media space) further forecasts the local segment of US social media ad revenues to grow from $840 million in 2011 to $3.1 billion in 2016, driven by better performance and richer ad formats like videos.

The firm says Twitter and Facebook will be a boon for local businesses and “democratize social ads” by offering self-service ad creation, distribution and analytics tools.

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