Where Are Social Media Budgets Coming From?

October 31, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Magazines | Marketing Budgets | Newspapers | PR | Social Media | TV Advertising

WildfireAdAge-Where-Social-Media-Budgets-Come-From-Oct2013Recent survey results from Adap.tv and Digiday suggest that brands are shifting money from their TV and online display budgets to fund increases in online video spending. What about social media budgets? Data from a Wildfire by Google study [download page] conducted by Ad Age offers some insights into where large companies are pulling their social media dollars from. Interestingly, traditional media funding is being cannibalized just as much as digital media.

The study surveyed more than 500 executives from large companies with some functional responsibility for social media, with about half of those respondents coming from companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenues.

Overall, roughly 30% of respondents’ social media budgets are incremental, meaning that social has its own new and distinct budget. Next on the list, about one-quarter of social media budgets are being derived from digital media funds. Traditional media are not immune to the pull of social media: 8.7% of social budgets overall (12.6% of budgets from the largest companies) are being pulled from TV, with print (12% overall; 10.9% of the largest) and radio (3.2% overall; 3.5% of the largest) also raided for funds.

For the most part, social media initiatives are falling under the brand marketing and digital media budget areas, according to respondents, although the extent to which that’s true differs fairly significantly by sector. (CPG companies’ social budgets are more likely to fall under the brand marketing umbrella than retailers, for example.)

The prognosis for social media spending looks good, according to the report, echoing results from other studies (such as this one). About two-thirds of respondents are planning to increase their spending on social media in the upcoming budget cycle.

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