Razorfish: 2009 social media, mobile ad spend tiny

Despite social media and mobile use skyrocketing, advertisers are only committing a small amount of their ad spend to the channels, according to new data released by interactive agency, Razorfish.

by Helen Leggatt

While American Internet users spend over 10% of their online time in social media environments such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs, Razorfish found that just 4% of its digital ad spend during 2009 went toward social media - 3% on social media display advertising and 1% on non-display social media advertising.

Instead online media is dominated by traditional channels such as ad networks, portals, search and vertical sites. These made up 88% of Razorfish's buys for 2009 broken down as follows:

Vertical sites - 31%
Search - 25%
Ad networks - 20%
Portals - 12%

Mobile, too, was not invested in as highly as perhaps the hype might suggest. According to the figures contained in the Razorfish Outlook Report 2010, just 2% of spend went on this channel.

However, despite the demand for accountability and measurability, advertisers didn't cease to experiment last year. According to the report, "When we asked our media teams about client spending in channels that were new to them, we found some robust statistics. One hundred percent of Razorfish clients that spent in digital out-of-home did so for the first time this year. More than 80% of clients investing in ad exchanges in 2009 were doing so for the first time. All told, the channels which clients experimented with the most in 2009 were ad exchanges, data brokers, digital out-of-home and social media."

Tags: ad budgets, ad spend, advertisers, digital media, online media, social media