Handily, just weeks before an IPO tipped to give Facebook a value twice that of Ford, some research has come to light underwriting investors’ colossal projection of faith.
Here, to give the flavour, is Mediapost’s take on it:
Social media has surpassed search, and is poised to overtake online display advertising as the No. 1 source of digital media planning and buying, according to the latest edition of a quarterly survey of US advertising agencies. The survey, conducted by Strata, the agency media software and processing firm owned by Comcast, found that 69% of agency executives now consider social the “focus” of their digital ad spending — up 32% over the past year, and now a close second behind display (71%) as the dominant digital media-buying platform in the minds of agency executives.
“The survey demonstrates that there has been a shift from search -– which has dominated the digital part of the business for the last five to 10 years -– to social,” says Strata CEO and president John Shelton.
Shelton said that view was affirmed to him this week while he was attending a technology conference of executives from small and mid-size agencies in New York City this week in which social was the main topic of discussion and nary a word was mentioned about either display or search.
“I did not hear the word ‘search’ once,” he said, “ and maybe two out of three of the vendors [presentations] and three out of four of the [agency executives’] questions were about social. Social media is absolutely their main focus right now.”
Enough said. At least, for now.
Posted by stuartsmithsblog 
