7 Social Media Trends for 2014

Last week I had the opportunity to follow an interesting webinar organized by eMarketer that gave an overview about the Social Media Trends for 2014.

According to Debra Aho Williamson (eMarketer Lead Analyst) 2014 will be the year of Social Acceptance. It means that budget allocated for Social Media Marketing will increase and new enterprises will start investing online. This “acceptance” signs a bigger awareness by companies regarding the social media potential.

Companies will consider more important data analytics to better understand and study the sales process related to a Social Media ad and fans acquisition will be no longer the primary goal. They will speak in terms of sales, conversion and results.

So what are the 7 Social Media Trends for 2014?

1. THE VIDEO OPPORTUNITY: Facebook will start focus more on video ads and the daily cost for a branding oriented video on the Social will raise from $1 million to $2.4 million (Reuters). And, the revenue from video ads will be in 2014 $1.31 billion. The challenge for Facebook will be unlock features, like the auto play, that can optimize the video ads potential in the newsfeed stream. On the other side, Twitter, is already counting and investing more on videos ( Blueflin and Trendrr already acquired). Twitter real time video tweets are a huge potential for marketers in real time advertising hitting the right moment for the right people. Instagram will be better used by marketers, and brands will try testing a bigger number of videos that could be shared on Facebook too.

2. SOCIAL= MOBILE: Twitter and Facebook are seeing strong revenues from mobile. “The 49% of Facebook’s Q3 2013 ad revenue came from mobile“(Facebook, October 2013) and “over 70% of Twitter’s Q3 2013 ad revenue came from mobile” (Twitter, October 2013). Facebook and Twitter are expecting a percentage of 40% of the US mobile display ad market to account for 2014. Than, the majority of social media use is made by smartphones. The challenge for advertisers will be try different way to engage with customers via mobile ads and try to avoid overloading feeds.

3. NATIVE EXPANSION: Another Social Media Trend for 2014 will be the native advertising expansion but without irritating customers. The challenge is to be more present in the newsfeed without backlash. Facebook, anyway, says will not significantly increase the percentage of ads in the newsfeed.

4. SOCIAL ADS GET MORE PROGRAMMATIC: In 2104 is expected that programmatic advertising will play a rising role. Programmatic techniques will help real time marketing easier to do and the benefits are: a faster social media ad placement, external triggers and more dynamic creative.

5. NO  MORE WALLED GARDENS: In 2014 marketers will start use the rich social media user data to target consumers across digital channels. Both Twitter and Facebook are working on mobile native advertising networks and tools to use data outside the social networks. (ex. Facebook login to track users and show ads outside of Facebook)

6. LOCATION MAKES A COME BACK: 74% of adults smartphone owners use it to get directions and information based on their location and 30% of social media users has an account set up to tag the location. People looks interested to get ads SMS or push notifications based on his location (like coupons or deals)

7. NEW VENUES, NEW ADS OPPORTUNITY: The big players for social media advertising are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Agencies total social ads investment are 53% on Facebook, 15% on Twitter and 15% on LinkedIn. Client-side are 41% on Facebook, 17% on Twitter and 18% on LinkedIn. New rising players could be Instagram and Pinterest, boosting social commerce (Promoted Pins). Some Mobile Messaging services are growing fast and could see ads in 2014.

These are the Social Media Trends for 2014 and, as seen, social media will play again a critical role in the online advertising and mobile.