Local businesses claim marketing and advertising presence on social networks
Author: Bill Laforme
November 18, 2009

For small businesses, being local does not necessarily mean staying local - at least when it comes to marketing and advertising.

A new study by Borrell Associates, a research and consulting firm specializing in interactive marketing and advertising, found that approximately 20 percent of advertising spending on social networking sites comes from local small businesses.

These local businesses will account for $641 million of the $3.3 billion that will be spent in 2009 on social networking advertising and marketing.

The study also found that 57 percent of this local business spending goes to Facebook and MySpace alone.

Furthermore, Facebook's advertising is dominated by small, local businesses - they account for 74 percent of the social networking site's advertising revenue.

Luckily for these local businesses, social networking websites occupy an increasingly prominent place on internet users' bookmarks list - a recent Experian Simmons study found that social networking is the fastest-growing new medium, with a user increase of 270 percent since 2007.

Spending on social networking advertising and marketing is expected to grow almost as fast as its user base, with eMarketer projecting an 18 percent increase on social networking spending in 2010 followed by a 12 percent increase in 2011.