It wasn’t all that long ago where social media advertising was at it’s height and businesses would pay a premium for favourable placements on the likes of Facebook, but as audiences have changed and social media advertising, is social media advertising still as effective as it once was, or has something changed along the way?
(Image from searchenginejournal.com)
For the most part it seems the answer is still that it is as effective as ever – global social media ad spend increased by 50% in a single year and showing a huge drive to continue pushing ads on social media platforms with up to 49% of internet users saying they’d be likely to buy a brand they’ve seen advertised on one of these platforms. Part of the issue, however, is standing out, with so many companies advertising their brand and sticking to similar trends, it can all become a big blur with brand names and what’s on offer all blending together and remaining the same. Whilst there has been a big push towards video advertising on these platforms too, it has helped this issue somewhat, but it’s still a very difficult and competitive market to be involved in.
There is change coming to the way some services can be advertised, the big target recently has been with online gaming particularly with the likes of these no gamstop casinos, having celebrities or public figures removed in order to cut down on the advertising options through the likes of social media with likenesses to be taken back in one of the many changes that are set to be made – these are the types of advertisements that typically have the bigger click through rates particularly amongst a certain audience too, and where the most change is set to be focussed.
It’s still very muddy waters, however, different ages and demographics want very different things from social media advertising with an older audience being more interested in receiving product information directly f rom the ad, with younger audiences having a higher value on ads being entertaining and being relevant to them and their identity – it makes it much harder to have an effective ad across all platforms, and it means that ads typically need to be targeted towards individual platforms with the older audiences most likely to frequent Facebook, and younger audiences most likely to frequent Snapchat and Instagram amongst others.
Advertising is more of a guessing and hoping game, hoping that your targeted ads are able to land with the audience they need to – social media has been the perfect delivery method for this and as such the effectiveness can vary – but it certainly seems as if social media advertising is as strong as ever, and won’t see any change anytime soon.
