Read all about it (20/08/2010)

Facebook expected to earn £823 million from display advertising in 2010

According to eMarketer, the social network giant should earn £823 million globally from advertising this year. This is a massive increase on the 2009 rate of £424.3 million, although in 2011, revenues could reach £1.12 billion.

Clearly the mass audience Facebook attracts is appealing to many advertisers. Facebook’s fastest growing advertising area is its self-serve ad platform. This now makes up 50% of all ad spend on the site as it has become a direct marketing tool for many brands.

The vast amounts of data Facebook has on its users is also beneficial for display advertising, which makes up the other half of ad revenue. In May, Facebook accounted for 16.8% of all display ad impressions in the US.

Ofcom study reveals media consumption takes up 45% of people’s time and is continuing to diversify

According to Ofcom’s annual Communications Market Report, people spend almost half their time consuming media. The report also highlights diversity of consumption, from listening to the radio to updating social network statuses.

Online activity is becoming increasingly dominant, largely due to a rise in ‘catch-up’ TV and smartphones. Almost a third of households with Internet access use it to watch online TV and smartphone usage has grown from 7.2 million users in May 2009 to 12.8 million a year later.

Advertisers have jumped on these developments. In 2009, despite recession, the online advertising industry grew to £3 billion, driven by an 8% increase in search and an 11% growth in display advertising.

Visitor numbers half after The Times installs a paywall, inferring consumers prefer funding through advertising

After installing a paywall on 2 July, visitor numbers to The Times’ website dropped from 2.22 million in June to 1.61 million in July.

Plus the time spent on the website dropped significantly. Consumers spent 5.8 minutes online in June, but just 4 minutes in July. Page views decreased even more dramatically, from 20 million in June to a mere 9 million in July.

Although this decrease was expected – and in fact, a more drastic decrease was predicted – it shows that many users aren’t willing to pay for news they can get elsewhere for free. This infers that advertising is a more appealing way of funding a website

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