The total turnover generated by social media is intended to reach $ 10.3 billion in 2011, thereby achieving a growth of 41.4% from revenues of $ 7.3 billion recorded in 2010.
The growth forecasts also persist over the coming years, with estimates of 14.9 billion dollars for 2012 and 29.1 billion dollars for 2015. The data were processed by the market analyst firm Gartner.
The main portion of the revenue generated by social media is the advertising sales, which for the current year is set to reach $ 5.5 billion and grow to 8.2 billion during 2012. The turnover of social media advertising includes the traditional display advertising and commercials by video, displayed on any device including PCs, smartphones and media tablets.
Neha Gupta, senior research analyst for Gartner, said: “The traders will begin to start the transition from a commercial type” onetime placement-and-click “to an advertisement that involves the user of the network and therefore will allocate a greater percentage of their advertising budgets towards social networking sites.
To calculate the turnover of social media analysts Gartner defines as “social media” Web sites with the following features:
- Sites where the content is created, consumed, promoted, distributed, discovered, or shared for purposes that are mainly related to community and social activities, rather than functional goals;
- The contents are usually in the form of words, pictures or video;
- The website can be a platform open or closed;
- The flow of expressions can be unidirectional or multidirectional.
The turnover generated by the activities of social gaming will reach $ 3.2 billion in 2011 and grow to 4.5 billion in 2012. This category includes the revenues that they earn directly to social networking sites by users who play titles developed in-house and revenue gained allows game developers / publishers to use their sites as a platform to allow users to play together on the network. It also includes revenues generated from the management of “virtual wallet” in games, used by users to purchase items in-game virtual currency.
“We have seen that social networks have a platform-oriented approach to monetization of games. Social networks have evolved into platforms for social gaming with the publication of APIs that help an ecosystem of developers and publishers,” said Gupta. “The dominant model for monetizing social games is based on advertising strategies and the” freemium “. The free games are funded, either through advertising called” wall advertisement “and” in-game branding “, or through monetary transactions in-games that allow users to improve their level or buy virtual items. “
The revenue derived from the subscription of social media is instead expected to reach 236 million in 2011 and a total of 313 million in 2012. Few social sites require a subscription, mainly for premium services. Some professional sites like LinkedIn, Xing in Germany and in France Vladeo require a subscription fee, for additional services such as a display of the depth profiles.
“From a perspective of the market turnover of social media is still in its early stages, although it has a large number of users. It is necessary to build new business models to leverage the most widely used and the level of involvement of users,” Gupta said.
2 comments
Extreme John
October 24, 2011 at 11:54 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Amazing figures. But it’s not surprising that these social media websites increase their revenues because a lot of things had evolved in social networking and more and more people are getting involved too– both young and old.
Albert Rox
October 28, 2011 at 3:49 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Great comment EJ..yes,social networking are becoming a strong industry….Targeted ads and social games with micro in-game payments have a terrifying success!!