eMarketer: US advertisers expected to spend $4.1 billion on paid social media ads in 2013

February 26, 2013, according to foreign media reports, a study commissioned by Digiday, a digital brand testing service provider Vizu, showed that advertisers' interest in paid advertising on social media sites has not shown any signs of waning this year. 64% of US advertisers plan to increase their social media paid advertising budgets, and only 2% of advertisers plan to cut their advertising budgets in this area this year.

Changes in US advertisers' social media paid advertising budgets in 2013

Most advertisers who plan to increase their social media paid advertising budgets intend to increase their advertising budgets by around 10%, with 26% of advertisers planning to increase their advertising budgets by 11% or more.

The survey found that 70% of advertisers claimed that they plan to invest 1% to 10% of their online advertising budgets in social advertising; 13% of advertisers plan to spend more than 21% of their online advertising budgets on social advertising; and the remaining 17% of advertisers will spend 11% to 20% of their online advertising budgets on social advertising.

The percentage of online advertising budgets that US advertisers allocate to social media advertising

Overall, eMarketer estimates that U.S. advertisers will spend $4.1 billion on paid social media ads this year, and expects that to grow by $5 billion next year.

Judging from the benefits that advertisers and advertising agencies hope to gain from these social ads, most advertisers mainly view social media advertising as a brand promotion tool with the goal of increasing their brand awareness and influence.

Purpose of using social media paid advertising by US advertisers and advertising agencies

Few advertisers and agencies are using social advertising as a pure direct response tool, but 54% of agencies and 39% of advertisers say they use paid social media advertising for both branding and direct response purposes.