Consumers May Not Hate Social Media Ads After All!

What do you know? Dynamic Logic’s 2009 Ad Reaction (PDF) survey shows that consumers may not hate social media ads after all. A series of surveys took a look at the popularity of social networking as well as ad reception across various media.

The December 2009 survey of 2000 US adults found that 59% were involved in social networking and another 16% were interested, but hadn’t tried it yet. (Email was tops with 95% actively participating and 2% interested.) The same survey asked for users’ attitudes toward advertising on various media. The top two positive responses (which I assume were along the lines of “excellent” and “good”) were reported—and social media ads were on-par with search ads:

• Opt-in email: 32%
• Online: 24%
• Online search: 24%
• Social media/networking: 22%
• Online video: 22%
• Advergames: 17%
• Non-opt-in email: 8%

But really, that’s kind of a tricky metric. If the survey had a scale of 1-5, with then we’re leaving out the people who have a neutral opinion of advertising. On the other hand, if it’s a four-point scale, that means 78% of those surveyed had a negative opinion of social media/networking ads. :\

They also asked about ad recall. Funny ads were the best remembered, with 74% claiming they remember funny ads (I remember funny ads, too, but I don’t remember what they’re selling all the time), and 53% said they remembered relevant ads. And before we talk about ad blindness, 58% of Facebook users said they’d noticed advertising on the site (above the reported MarketNorm of 39%). 70% of Facebook users (1150 surveyed), Twitter users (397 surveyed) and MySpace users (906 surveyed) would be willing to accept more advertising on those sites if it kept the service free.

What do you think? Will you increase your advertising on social media sites, or work to make your creative funnier and targeting more relevant? Do you agree with the findings of these surveys?

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