14 DAY TRIAL // Social networking has been around for some years now with users and time spent growing steadily. However, new numbers from Nielsen show that social networking has grown in a big way in the past year, with users spending almost three times more on social networks. Largely due to the huge increase in user numbers Facebook has seen in the past year, the shift does mark a growing trend and a change in the way users spend their time online.
“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used,” Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights at Nielsen’s online division, said. “While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”
In August 2009, Internet users spent on average 17 percent of their time online on social networks, a number almost three times bigger than in August 2008, when social networks only managed to attract six percent of the users' time. This does reflect a big change in the way they are relating to the online environment, but it has also attracted changes from the players involved, especially when it comes to advertising, which has seen a dramatic shift towards social networks, even as the rest of the market has tanked.
“Estimated online advertising spending on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119 percent, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to approximately $108 million in August 2009 – all despite a recession. Share of estimated spend on these sites has doubled, from 7 percent of online ad spend in 2008 to 15 percent in 2009,” Nielsen also found.
All sectors have increased their advertising budgets on social networking, even as many have decreased marketing spending overall, sometimes dramatically so. The entertainment sector, for example, has increased its spending on social networks more than 800 percent, this while only spending 40 percent more on online advertising. The hardware and electronics sector has almost doubled its budget for social networks in the last year, while at the same time halving spending overall.