Top Advertising Spot Moves from the Super Bowl to Facebook and Farmville? - Associated Content

For many years, the most sought after, and expensive, advertising opportunity for businesses was the coveted Super Bowl commercial spot. The advertising war began as viewers turned to the  Super Bowl, not only for the game, but for the amazing commercials that were aired. However, the last few years have seen a decline in the Super Bowl commercial competition, with many commercials being nothing but standard spots. Could this decline in advertising during the Super Bowl be due to the high cost and not so high return? Could it be that businesses have found a cheaper and more affective avenue for advertising in another game?

With the huge boom in advertising through social media, it looks as though games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars are beating out the Super Bowl as top venues to spend your businesses marketing budget on. According to eMarketer, a research firm, advertising spending on social networking sites will increase 55% to $3.08 billion in 2011. That number is up from the $1.99 billion spent in 2010.

A survey conducted by SaleSpider says that while 2010 was a learning curve year for small businesses, 2011 will see a huge increase in advertising via social media networking sites by small and medium sized businesses. They polled 384 small and medium business owners and 75% plan to increase their social media advertising. Over 50% of those businesses surveyed were already using social networking advertising and of those 40% said their boost in sales as a result was significant.

According to Facebook statistics, they have more than 500 million active users. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. There are over 900 million objects (pages, groups, events, etc) that people interact with. More than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month. These numbers are huge and provide a perfect opportunity for businesses of any size to target and advertise to potential customers.

Published by Deborah Braconnier - Featured Contributor on Associated Content in Business & Finance

Deborah brings with her over 10+ years as an owner of multiple small businesses (retail gift basket business, web design business, and online business directory), as well as an independent consultant in smal...   View profile

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