Social media is one of the best of many tools that marketers have for successful advertising. It’s shown great results in the past, and its use by advertisers has grown more and more each year, since the time when it started to become popular. It seemed like nothing could stop it from being the biggest thing in advertising for a long while, but now, according to eMarketer and the Association of National Advertisers, “growth has plateaued.” The time has come where social networks have been conquered by another platform in yearly growth. As you can already assume, the platforms that have outdone social media are mobile and viral video.

According to eMarketer’s chart, there has been much growth in usage of social media by advertisers since 2011, when 89% of surveyed marketers reported that they were focusing their attention on social media. In 2012, the number grew only slightly to 90%. Therefore, social media has not been tampered with too much, and things have pretty much remained steady for a year now. However, for mobile platforms, the numbers have also steadied, going from 75% to 74% in the year. The important thing is, though, that mobile still has much more room for growth than do social networks. “Usage held steady at around three-quarters of marketers between 2011 and 2012, but 17% of respondents to the ANA survey reported that this was their first year using mobile, and another 17% planned to start using it in the next year. Location-based apps, specifically, were expected to be taken up by 19% of marketers in the next year.”

Trumping both of the aforementioned platforms in growth is viral video. In 2007, the percentage of respondents was 25% and now in 2012, the number is 80%. Between the years, there has been a steady growth, showing that more and more marketers are becoming interested in the platform. Only 14% of viral video users have used the platform for under a year, while 10% say they plan on using it next year. Still, though, video now has less room for growth with marketers, leaving mobile as the likely platform for growth in the near future. As of right now, mobile is the big thing in advertising news, and it seems the most reliable of advertising platforms. Based on the charts, mobile still has room to grow, so it will stay a popular platform for some time.

Even though social networking has flattened out in growth, “eMarketer estimates advertisers will spend $3.63 billion in the US and over $4 billion more in the rest of the world on social networking sites this year. And that’s just paid ad spending.” It’s still doing well, but since mobile is already doing so well and still has so much room for growth, there’s a good chance it will have much more usage than social media in the future. Next year’s statistics will probably show mobile as being just about even with social media in growth, leaving another platform to start its rise.
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Where do all Super Affiliates Go?
Super Affiliate Media, of course.

You’re probably aware of how important mobile platforms have become, not only for advertisers and marketing, but for businesses and communication as well. Everywhere you look, someone is on a smartphone or tablet having a conversation, playing a game, or even just finding a place to grab a quick meal. They’ve made the internet available from just about anywhere on the globe and they’ve increased the amount of overall internet use. Well, now the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released statistics that show that a total of 69% of mobile users don’t ever leave their homes without their mobile devices. This means that the majority of people have made mobile devices an essential in their daily lives.

What’s more important is how these constant mobile users are interacting with the mobile ads that advertisers are spending a lot of money on these days. IAB writes in their post, “There is a strong degree of ad interaction among tablet users, with nearly half (47%) saying that they engage with ads on that device more than once a week.” As for smartphone users, “One in four (25%) smartphone users also said that they interact with ads at that same frequency.” Finally, the most stunning and exciting statistic that IAB gives is, “Once these mobile device users engage with an ad, they are extremely likely to take action (80% smartphone users, 89% tablet users).”

Mobile users seem to be more engaged with what they are doing on their devices, being that the information is directly in their hands. They show higher interest in mobile ads than they might in desktop advertising, mainly because mobile ads are often more interactive and they often stand out more. Now, for those with both a smartphone and a tablet there are, “60 percent preferring a smartphone to “look up info on-the-go,” in contrast to 22 percent who would choose a tablet for that activity.”

Another bit of interesting information that the IAB has commented upon is the time of day that mobile users are active on their devices. They state that 20% of users access social media apps upon first waking up in the morning, 28% use their devices around midday “free time” areas, and the primetime for mobile use is during the evening hours, when work and school are done for the day. These statistics may be of no surprise, but they may be helpful in the future, for gathering the patterns of mobile use.

It’s quite obvious that smartphones and tablets have transformed consumer behavior in the digital marketing universe, opening up exciting new opportunities for advertisers. Now that we know that people almost rely on mobile devices for daily life, it’s even more prudent to take advantage of mobile advertising. With the way things are going, I can only imagine what sorts of advertising methods are going to start being developed for mobile platforms. Since mobile is relatively young in the grand scheme, it will be reliable for marketing for a long while, making it more valuable than some may think.

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According to a recent study by Capstone Investments, Facebook has  lost 1% of their US and European user base over the last 6 months, meaning that not only is the growth of Facebook has stopped, but now declining. Based on this investment study, Facebook’s stock dropped 8% in the last two days.

According to the LA Times:

But the decline in Facebook users isn’t exclusive to the U.S. Maher also said the company has felt a drop in users in 14 of the 23 countries in which it has more than a 50% market penetration. In the nine countries that didn’t see a decline in the social network’s users, Facebook’s growth saw very little change over the last three months, the analyst said.

This does not come as good news, as many people have always said that despite its enormous growth, Facebook may just be an internet fad and is doomed to suffer enormous losses in the future like any fad.

According to the study, another problem seems to be that too much of the fanbase on Facebook is music based:

 26 of the top 200 Facebook fan pages are currently brands, indicating most of the growth in Facebook ad revenue has likely come from smaller, performance-based advertisers rather than large national/international brands. Large % Of Brand Pages From Retailers Highlights Retail Opportunity. According to our analysis 45% of the top 100 brand ages were retailers – the top 5 being McDonalds, Victoria’s Secret, Walmart, Target, and Subway. In our opinion, this indicates that retail is a category that can be further exploited at Facebook via new revenue streams. Heavy Concentration Of Musicians In Top Fan Pages Is An Issue. Our data indicates that 85 of the top 200 Facebook fan pages are musicians or some form of celebrity. We believe this is a risk given the recent news that Lady GaGa has raised funding to create her own social network and the likelihood that musicians/celebrities advertise much less than brands.

Bloomberg points to there being issues with Facebook’s inability to capitalize on mobile users, and that perhaps that the mobile growth actually will hurt Facebook

Another concern for investors is the company’s ability to make money from advertisers vying to reach social-network users on mobile devices. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is focused on adapting his service to mobile devices, where growth in usage is outpacing sales from mobile ads. Bringing Facebook’s features to handheld gadgets is difficult because the user experience is so different than on desktop computers, he said in an interview at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Ads shown on mobile phones are smaller and may be less appealing to advertisers and less lucrative than marketing messages on bigger computers. This concern prompted Facebook, just days before the IPO, to advise analysts to lower their estimates for second-quarter sales.

We all remember the release of Google+ and how the success that it brought in didn’t seem to be quite as Google had expected. Well, apparently Google’s year old social network is doing quite well nowadays, based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index for July of 2012. Sure that’s exciting, but what’s more of a shock is how well Facebook did on the same list. It’s almost as if Facebook and Google+ are in one another’s expected spots in the list. Honestly, the ACSI was completely different from what I though it would be, expecting Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest to be topping the list as they’re all we here about.

However, the reality baffled me at first, making me understand the world of social media a bit more. Well, as we know, the perfect score in the ACSI would be a 100 percent satisfaction report, which almost never happens. Topping the list was Google+ at 78, which would be about a C+ in grade school. The only thing that the ACSI listed that has done as well as Google+ in the social media category was Wikipedia. However, if in your eyes Wikipedia is a social media website, then you need an explanation as to what social media is. That said, the next thing following Google+ is YouTube at 73, being another network run by Google. So, needless to say, Google is doing pretty well in the social networking world, making it a reliable source (as always) for advertising.

Now, speaking of advertising, we also have all heard of the Facebook advertising troubles in the recent past. Well, now it seems that Facebook has landed a spot as the least satisfying social network at 61 percent. Myspace sits below it with no recorded number, but Myspace should really no longer be considered for advertising or anything else really. Regardless, Facebook has the lowest satisfaction despite its popularity, and I have a good idea as to why that might be. Facebook has been around longer than LinkedIn (which is just above it on the ACSI), Twitter, and definitely Google+. Therefore, American consumers have had a lot of time to play around on Facebook and use all of its features, finding any tiny flaw that may exist within Facebook’s inner workings. Google+, however, is still a baby in social media and, from what I have heard, there are still many people who are hesitant to try it out. Furthermore, the simple fact is that Facebook has more users to ask about their satisfaction. Either way, it’s still an exciting fact that Google+ is doing so well amongst consumers.

With consumers loving Google+ so much, the new social media network is simply rooting itself as yet another piece of Google success. Advertisers have trusted Google significantly in the past, and this fact will just exemplify that trust, making Google one of the better marketing options. Google+ is still relatively new in comparison to its biggest competitor, but is seems so far, so good.

Yahoo! Is surely hoping that they can put the past couple years, and several CEO changes behind them and begin focusing again on their future. Since 2009 Yahoo! Has seen several different people serve as CEO, some for only months. In 2009 Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, stepped down. Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk, took his place for a little over a year before being fired in 2011. Then the embarrassment of Scott Thompson who resigned in May after it was discovered that he lied about his academic credentials to get the job.

All this disruption in the leadership team couldn’t have come at a worse time either with many of their strongest competitors making huge advancements. Google’s ad serving arm, Adwords, has rocketed ahead of Yahoo, and Facebook is improving their ad servicing almost every day.

Marissa Mayer has been working for Google for the past 13 years and has established a reputation for herself as innovative, hard working and a visionary. In fact, whether you know it or not, you undoubtedly see her most famous piece of work almost every day. Marissa designed Google’s famous search home page years ago.

Marissa resigned from Google Monday afternoon with a phone call and will start her new role with Yahoo! Tuesday. The news has shocked many in the tech world, and breathed new life into the struggling Yahoo!. Shares of Yahoo! Stock rose by 2.14% to $15.98 in the extended hours trading after the news hit Wall Street. The momentum is expected by many to continue to build as the benefits Marissa brings to Yahoo! Continue to add up.

The board of directors at Yahoo! Made the unexpected move to bring Mayer in may very well prove to be the best choice they could make. Mayer has had years of experience in a similar company that was also supported by ad-revenue. Mayer has been working hard on the mobile technologies at Google and is expected to bring that focus with her to Yahoo! Possibly giving them a new and exciting outlook to users and investors alike.

The move seems very smart for Meyer personally as well because there was little chance that she would ever have gotten the opportunity to become CEO at Google. The two co-founders of the Internet search giant, Larry Page and Sergey Brin will not likely step down anytime in the near future which means Meyer would have been stuck in her position with little further advancement. Stepping into the CEO role at Yahoo! Gives her an opportunity to take one of the most powerful and well known tech companies in the world to the next level.

While there is still a lot of uncertainty behind the former dominant force on the internet, this move will certainly bring a lot of extra attention to Yahoo! Over the coming months. Most people expect that Meyer will be able to step into the role seamlessly and begin the difficult job of turning the company around.

It’s almost impossible for anyone in marketing to have not heard about mobile commerce and its potential for marketers over the past several years.  The outlook today, however, is even more positive than ever with the continuing explosion in popularity of both smart phones and tablets.  Take into consideration these impressive statistics:

• By the end of 2012 there will be approximately 115.8 million smart phone users in the US alone.  By 2015 it is expected to reach 176.3 Million. (from eMarketer)
• Mobile commerce sales will reach $111.6 Billion by the end of 2012, marking a 73.1 percent increase. (from eMarketer)
• Consumers are getting more comfortable making purchases from mobile devices with 64% of smart phone owners using their mobile device to shop online (from eDigital Research) and 1 in 5 tablet owners having used their device to make online purchases (from ComScore).

There are other impressive statistics that are being released almost every day and they all show one thing in common.  Mobile commerce is not going away, and any business that isn’t putting some significant focus in this area is missing out on a huge opportunity.  The mobile market today is evolving quickly as new technologies are developed and the wireless connections speeds are improving quickly.  This is opening up many opportunities for virtually every type of business.

Some businesses are taking an approach of waiting until the rapid change dies down, but this will almost certainly result in big losses in both the short and long term profits of their business.  There is currently no end in sight to the changes which are constantly taking place in the mobile market.  The encouraging thing about this, however, is that a business does not need to be on the cutting edge to cash in on the rapid growth of mobile commerce.

One of the ways in which some companies are beating the learning curve is by the affiliate marketing model to the mobile world.  By allowing their affiliates to do the work of keeping up with the latest trends in mobile commerce the companies can continue to focus on their core strengths while still realizing the benefits of this market.  There are, of course, some challenges with putting affiliate programs into a mobile market, but they are well worth the extra effort.

A recent study showed shows that affiliate marketing growth will surpass that of paid search over the course of the next four years.  An estimated 16.7% increase in business spending on affiliate marketing is expected through 2016.  This is, at least in part, due to the fact that the affiliate marketing model will help ensure companies are able to reap the massive rewards from the mobile market.

As more and more focus is put toward mobile commerce it can be expected that there will be some significant changes and improvements for both affiliate marketing and direct marketing as well.  This is certainly a segment of marketing which everyone will need to keep a close eye on.
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