Social-Network Ad Spending Starting to Add Up

When you look at dollars spent vs. potential audience, it’s clear that advertisers haven’t exactly plunged into social media with the same abandon as Net users, but judging by the latest numbers from eMarketer, they are wading in at a quickening pace. The research outfit today boosted its estimates for U.S. social-network ad spending this year to $1.68 billion from its December forecast of $1.3 billion, with expectations that it will top $2 billion in 2011. Next year should also see U.S. spending overtaken by overseas spending. In the U.S. market, eMarketer said, Facebook will get about half those ad dollars, with MySpace’s take continuing to drop and Twitter’s poised to take off if it can show its “resonance” model of measuring advertising effectiveness works.