Social Networking Surge in Canada Shows Bright Future for Online Advertisers
October 10th, 2007 Posted in NewsFour out of ten Canadians have clicked on an online social networking website, with half of them visit the website almost daily and spend five-and-a-half hours on an average each week to socialize online. This startling figure reveals a promising future for the online advertising industry as this market of social networking users which spend time on websites such as Facebook and Windows Free Spaces are likely to go into online shopping and respond to advertising via the Internet according to a study entitled “Online Socialization, Social Networking and Online Communities” conducted by Ipsos Reid, a reach organization based in Vancouver, Canada.
The study showed that nearly 37% of adult Internet users in Canada have visited an online social community with 29% actually having a personal profile in at least one such website. “Online social networks and communities appear to have hit the Internet with the momentum of a runaway locomotive,” concluded the study.
“This is a staggering result given that these sites didn’t exist four years ago. Facebook launched in early 2004, as did MSN Spaces,” said Scott Patton, senior research manager for Ipsos in Winnipeg, Canada. “Visitors to these sites are more apt to respond to a marketing message and make a purchase or compare products online.”
In a survey done among 1,000 Canadian respondents on the phone and 1,103 more respondents online, Ipsos figured out that 65% of persons who frequent social networking websites click on an online advertisement. These numbers present a good opportunity for the online marketing industries to establish partnerships with these social networking websites. “The challenge for the managers and developers of online social networks and communities will be to generate enough positive interest to keep up the momentum they have experienced so far,” says Patton.
According to Payton, online businesses and website developers could more successfully develop new ways to expand their contact with current users which will eventually entice them to spend more time online on the Internet and convince them to use their own social networking website. “Given the differences in online behavior between users and non-users - plus the sheer number of hours spent online by people visiting social network sites - the opportunities cannot be ignored from a marketing perspective.” Patton explains, “It’s not hard to imagine the possibilities that online social networks represent for marketing. The challenge is to decide which online social network to partner with when targeting customers.”
The same study revealed that Facebook is currently the most popular social network in Canada with over two-thirds of Internet users who have an online social network have one profile on Facebook. Each Canadian Facebook user spends an average 5.9 hours weekly.
The number of social networking websites continues to increase despite having slowed down from its initial growth. But the fact does not seem to bother online businesses who believe that while that the services that social networking feature may change, it however should not be considered as a mere fad. “People said that about computers when they first came out,” Patton said. “The Internet is here to stay. The more we become this big global community, the more this kind of network will be important.”
