As brands plan to boost their social media spend, only a relatively small portion of those dollars is going to advertisements. According to a new survey by Ad Age, marketers reported spending slightly more in digital and social-media channels than prior surveys, but that spending continues to be a relatively small slice overall marketing budgets.
A little less than half of respondents, 45%, Â said they spend 1-10% of their overall marketing budgets on social media, while 38% said they spend more than 30% on social. In a survey of Ad Age readers published in September, only 29% of marketers said spending on social was more than 30%.
Advertisers largely see social media advertising as a branding channel. Asked to rank their goals for social, 39% of respondents listed “building awareness and sentiment for my brand” as the top priority. “Driving traffic to my website” was a distant second, with 16% citing it as their top priority.
Around 84% of respondents reported using Facebook, making it the dominant social platform. In addition, Facebook commands a greater share of digital budgets than Twitter and YouTube.
In the fall, the influence of “organic reach” on Facebook started to decline dramatically, upsetting marketers who had spent time and effort building up fans on the social platform. To Facebook’s benefit, it may have helped steer brands toward paid ads. In the most recent survey, 83% said they had paid for ads on Facebook, up from around 70% in the September poll.
But as marketers plan for the future, they appear to be looking more at Twitter. Nearly half of respondents, 44%, said they had increased their spending on Twitter over the past 6 months and 63% said they planned to do so over the next year. By comparison, 59% said they expect to spend more on Facebook. And more marketers surveyed said they plan to decrease spending on Facebook (11%) than on Twitter (7%).
Top read more survey results click here.