Big-brands miss out in social media

The success of social media sites has been relentless. They are still gathering speed fast and taking everyone with them - apart from big-brand advertisers.

The latest data from a study carried out by comScore in June this year, showed that social networking sites accounted for more than 20 percent of all display ads viewed online, with MySpace and Facebook combining for roughly 80 percent of ads among sites in the category. Facebook took an 8.2 percent share of all display ads, with MySpace taking 9.2 percent.

Meanwhile, AT&T leapfrogged Experian Interactive to easily rank as the number one advertiser when it came to impressions on social networking sites during June. The telecom giant racked up 2 billion impressions while pushing free phones during the month, revealing a big increase compared to the 1.37 billion comScore measured in May. Social networking sites made up 30 percent of AT&T's total display ads in June, putting its ads in front of a huge 89 million unique visitors.

Yet, one could not help but notice the distinct lack of many other large companies following AT&T's footsteps into social media advertising. The director of industry analysis at comScore, Andrew Lipsman, said, "one thing I think is interesting is what we don't see in the data, and that is that some very big brand advertisers appear to be virtually ignoring social networking sites as an advertising channel."

Lipsman went on to say that this could be down to long-held obsession with using clicks to measure ad effectiveness since social networking sites have notoriously low click-through rates. However, big-brand advertisers should be concentrating on other metrics to evaluate advertising effectiveness online, since brand-building ads can be very effective without user engagement or clicks. "The ad exposures themselves have value. I would expect that once this addiction to clicks is broken, more of the major brand advertisers will utilize this channel more effectively," said Lipsman.

Social networking within sites such as Facebook and MySpace presents a great opportunity for advertisers. Seeing a company successfully networking with the opinionated and obsessive social media community can really help its image and reputation as a company who is interested in what the consumer wants. Many people respect companies that are more down to earth and in touch with their customer base. A company that is successful in using social media and networking as an advertising vehicle, is most likely to find those consumers who are responsive to the advertiser's message.

Where as it may be the case that some big names chose not to utilize social media to its full capacity, big brand advertisers do have a presence on social media sites, just not through the conventional ad units served via networks feeding ads to social sites such as Facebook.

Nonetheless, with the pace at which social networking sites and social media is expanding, it can only be a matter of time before all the big brands are taking advantage of what will eventually become the most effective medium for interactive advertising.

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