Last week, eMarketer lowered their estimates for advertiser spending on social networks in the US. Apparently, the research company sees the same trend globally, and has lowered worldwide estimates, at least in the long-term. eMarketer now sees social networking ad spend in 2011 at $4.3 billion, versus the previous estimate of $4.7 billion. As Alley Insider notes, estimates for 2008 have remained the same at $1.9 billion globally.
So, between lowered ad spending estimates and slowing traffic growth at top social networks MySpace and Facebook, is it time to panic? Not quite. As eMarketer reports, ad spending on social networks is still projected to outpace online advertising on the whole by a wide margin: 68% to 22% in 2008. Not to mention, with how quickly things change in the social networking and online advertising space, estimates that look three years ahead are certainly subject to change.
Of course, the biggest influence on ad spending is something neither the social networks nor the advertising networks can control: the economy. Advertising budgets are typically the first thing to get cut in a recession, so if the economy falls apart, look for these estimates along with those for most other online ad metrics to get slashed further.
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