Last month we informed you about the opposite trend Facebook and MySpace experience - for the first time, Mark Zuckerberg's social network had overtaken MySpace in the local U.S. market, after overtaking it in the global scenario.
Now we see the economic consequences of it. Beyond the management changes and staff reduction of 30%, the advertising is going towards Facebook. In June's post we said MySpace had still a more robust range of advertising options than Facebook and that advertisers had not find a good way to invest more on Facebook than in MySpace.
However, the reality one month later is different. Social Media appears to be an unsteady landscape tied directly to the popularity, trendiness, and momentum of any given network at any given moment in time.
According to eMarketer, US ads spending at MySpace will fall 15% to $495 million in 2009 from $585 million in 2008, while Facebook will grow from $210 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2009.
It is also expected that Facebook surpass MySpace revenues by 2011. According to Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst, "Facebook, once a distant second to MySpace, has outperformed its rival in nearly every measure of usage-and is on track to surpass MySpace in ad spending by 2011".
In general, she predicted a nice future for social networking and their ads potential: "The expected rebound in spending will come as more companies focus on creating and implementing an overall social marketing strategy. And it is a clear indication that the experimental phase of social network marketing is finally drawing to an end".
Although ads spending is 3% down this year (recession, remember?), budgets will grow by 13.2% in 2010 and 8.2% in 2011, according to eMarketer.
By now, advertising spending on Facebook and MySpace alone account for 2x the total advertising dollars going to all other networks combined.
