Niche Marketing in Social Networks

As reported by eMarketer in November 2007 Facebook and MySpace are among the most visited sites in the United States. eMarketer has estimated that $900 million was spent on social network advertising in 2007 and projects advertisers to spend $2.5 billion by 2011. The hope of the advertisers is harness viral marketing and user generated content, where users will spread the advertising word from friend to friend. Advertising spend on MySpace is projected to increase to $820 million and Facebook to $215 million. (Internet Advertising Bureau article).

What these reports fail to demonstrate is the actual effect of advertising on the main social network sites, and the expected return on investment or revenue generation from these viral campaigns throughout the networks. A strong focus and shift appears to be towards nich social networks, as advertisers are more likely to be able to target the correct demographics without crossing into grey territory with regard to profile privacy. eMarketer estimated the total advertising spent within niche social networks in 2007 at $70 million with a projected growth to $120 million. Within niche social marketing sites business to business marketers would be able to target decision makers within their target market. A post in Mashable, “Advertisers Increasingly Eying Niche Social Networks”, stated that there is a perception that an improved return on investment for the advertisers marketing dollar can be seen while marketing throughout niche social networks.  

If you have any concrete data with regard to ROI from niche social networking sites compared to larger network sites I would like to see it as I continue to explore the social l social networking niche market and online niche marketing in general. 

Email me at marketermate@gmail.com.