Holiday Ad Budgets Get Social

Mike Phillips — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:00:00 GMT

More advertisers are spending more of their ad budgets on social network advertising this holiday season, according to financial consulting firm BDO, USA. The BDO USA Retail Compass Survey of CMOs examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailer and consumer product companies* located throughout the country.

They found that:

27% of CMOs claim online advertising accounts for most of their holiday advertising and marketing budget, up from 18% in 2009.

75% of CMOs say they included social networking in their marketing strategies this year, up from 51% in 2009 and just 4% in 2007.

62% say social media advertising accounts for 10% or less of their marketing efforts.

Email promotions were cited as the top online moneymaker on Black Friday by 45% of respondents, yet only the thrid highest traffic driver. (A good argument for targeted email marketing.)

Not surprisingly, Facebook led the way for onilne retail marketing budgets. A full 92% of CMOs say they are focusing their social media budgets on Facebook. That's up from 76% in 2009. Twitter was next (61%), followed by YouTube (20%), LinkedIn (15%) and MySpace (8%) as a key marketing focus.

*Revenues of $100 million to $100 billion.

Internet Advertising : youtube, online advertising

Holiday Ad Budgets Get Social