Social Networking and Advertisements

Practically everyone (who's anyone) is on some sort of social networking site like Facebook or Myspace and it can be tricky to find ways to tap into this massive amount of users. According to a recent article on MediaPost, 43% of everyone who is online uses some sort of social networking. This is an amazing amount of people to advertise to and as this study points out, those social networkers are more likely to shop and spend more online than their peers. But it is tricky to get these users to actually look at your advertisement. This is why advertisers have to find even more creative ways to get this group of people to look, click and follow through. But if one can actually achieve this, then your clients business will boom.

Advertising To Social Networkers Tricky

by Jack Loechner, 13 minutes ago

A recent study by InsightExpress, exploring participation trends across social networks, as well as how receptive their members are to advertising, found that 43% of the online population reports using a social networking site. And, no matter their age or number of profiles, social networkers see ad

full article: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100758#comments

This article has a really awesome break down chart of what social networking people do online and the percent that do it compared to those who do not belong to a social networking site.

The Impending Doom for Radio? Wachovia analyst thinks so...

Everyone knows that radio isn't what it used to be but how soon, if ever, will radio fade into the background noise of today's new media convergence? Wachovia analyst Marci Ryvicker thinks that it will be sometime time soon because 2009 isn't proving to be any better than last year.

Wachovia Forecasts Radio Doom In '09 by Erik Sass,

If anyone is still cherishing hopes of a radio turnaround in 2009, Wachovia analyst Marci Ryvicker's latest note to investors should doom that idea. The outlook is overwhelmingly negative, as Ryvicker sees a 9% decline in revenues in 2008 followed by a further 13% decline in 2009.

"It's the same depressing story," Ryvicker noted. "Advertisers are cutting back significantly, given rising unemployment and the general state of the economy."....continue reading (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100330)

The article goes on to talk about the dismal future for radio advertising for 2009 and even though the last figures from 2008 are not in yet, Ryvicker says it won't prove to be any different than the other quarters. The reason for this analyst's grim outlook is the lack of local and some national advertising for radio stations that used to be their bread and butter. Without the proper advertising, radio stations have very little options left and have started to defaulting on their loans. What could this mean? This might mean even more consolidation of radio stations by one company because they might want to take the chance to buy more radio stations at the cheap price their bank might be selling them for. This could cause even more harm to the radio station's programming and individuality.

I do believe that their will always be a place for radio in our society and communities but the traditional roles of the radio have long been gone. Only time will tell if the radio industry can keep up with the times. Until then, advertisers will continue to drop their dollars from radio because it will not be making them any money. And with the economy still in shambles and a recovery from it not in the near future, you will see more and more advertisers take their dollars some place else.