Marketers and advertisers are looking forward to their budgets for the next 12 months, and affiliate advertising dollars could decrease. Image: Flickr / 401K / CC-BY
Marketing and advertising spending is a world that is constantly changing. A semiannual survey of advertisers found that social media advertising spending will become a much bigger part of advertising and marketing budgets.
The categories of digital spending
Spending on digital marketing and advertising, as represented by 1,200 advertisers surveyed, is going to be shifting. Digital ad spending is split into social media advertising, ad exchanges, ad networks and advertising portals. This is in addition to the spending on traditional media and advertising that these brands and agencies plan on in the next year.
The coming year of spending
According to the most recent survey, social media advertising is expected to account for 27 percent of digital advertising budgets in the next year. Last year, social media accounted for about 22 percent of digital media advertising. Much of this increase will be coming out of spending on ad exchanges and networks.
What this means for affiliates
For affiliate marketers, this survey has several major implications. First of all, many brands and agencies are planning on reducing their spending on networks and exchanges, which could include affiliate networks. This also means that brands are focusing on social media. Affiliates who integrate social media into their marketing campaigns and offerings will continue to be more successful and will have more marketable skills to offer to their potential customers.
Focusing on results
One thing that the Advertiser Perceptions study points out is that this survey is not to be taken as anything other than guidelines for what marketers and advertisers plan on spending money on. The reality is that the planned spending will change over the year, depending on what shows success and what does not. As an advertising partner to brands and businesses online, you need to be able to show that your marketing efforts have a great return on investment. If your affiliate program is performance-based, then you are already getting paid on the basis of the the performance of your marketing efforts. If you have pay-per-click or pay-per-view affiliate marketing programs, then it is important to make sure the traffic you provide for your advertisers is as qualified and as effective as possible.