2010: The rise of social-enabled web advertising

If 2009 will be remembered as the year social media went mainstream, 2010 will see an extension of the social media proliferation into more traditional media platforms.  One example I’m keeping my eye on is SocialMedia.com, and its goal to incorporate social media into different types of web advertising.  (Just to clarify, I’m not talking about buying ads on social media websites like Facebook.)

This year was a perfect opportunity for marketers to experiment with social media, since marketing budgets in all industries were slashed and marketers had fewer dollars to spend on traditional marketing programs.  You can’t beat the price of setting up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page – free!  But those same marketers also realized that while the cash outlay might be nil, a significant amount of time and effort is required to do social media the right way.   Social media can be a powerful mouthpiece, but to be most effective it needs to be used with other forms of marketing and promotion – and that’s where I think we’re headed in 2010.

More than a decade ago, banners brought advertising to the web, but they often weren’t relevant to the viewer and didn’t receive much interaction.  Then Google AdWords made advertising relevant by placing ads alongside search results, but Google’s text ads aren’t social.  What if you could make web ads both relevant and social?  That’s the next logical step – and it’s exactly what companies like SocialMedia.com are trying to do.  Click here to see a simple explanation on the company’s website.  In a nutshell, this new form of web display (banner) advertising brings social media directly into the ad, to allow users to interact with their social network through the ad.  In some of SocialMedia.com’s examples, their ads allow you to tweet about a movie to your friends, pass along your thoughts about a product with your network, or even share a video virally with your social circles – all without leaving the ad.

Social-enabled web advertising addresses several realities marketers are facing:
1.  Web display ad clickthrough rates are plummeting, so advertisers want to find ways to boost interaction and engagement with their ads
2.  Everyone’s flocking to social media, and a marketing manager’s boss is likely to ask “What’s our company doing?”
3.  Spending money on social media is harder than spending an advertising budget

I expect digital agencies to embrace in-ad social advertising, because it gives them a bigger role in social media.  It lets companies spend money through a more traditional channel – on advertising – but in a way that supports the brand’s social efforts.  Plus it’s easily scalable, to give companies the ability to funnel money toward a particular social initiative quickly and easily.  And perhaps most importantly, it’s a really sexy recommendation to make to a client!

I’m not prepared to say social-enabled web advertising is the next Twitter.  But as the social media stakes get higher, I believe plenty of marketers will turn to in-ad social advertising to boost their Twitter following or juice their Facebook page’s impact.