ISLAMABAD: Usage of online social media has matured and more than 1bn people worldwide used social media in year 2012. Global social media revenue is forecast to reach US$16.9bn in 2012, up 43.1pc from 2011 revenue of US$11.8bn, according to Gartner.
Advertising is, and will continue to be, the largest contributor to overall social media revenue and is projected to total US$8.8bn in 2012, Silicon republic Website Quoted.
Social gaming revenue more than doubled between 2010 and 2011 and is expected to reach US$6.2bn in 2012, while revenue from subscriptions is expected to total US$278m this year.
"Usage of online social media has matured, and more than 1bn people worldwide will use social networks this year," said Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner.
Advertising is, and will continue to be, the largest contributor to overall social media revenue and is projected to total US$8.8bn in 2012.
Social gaming revenue more than doubled between 2010 and 2011 and is expected to reach US$6.2bn in 2012, while revenue from subscriptions is expected to total US$278m this year.
"Although the number of social media users is large, and in some cases increasingly mature in their usage patterns, the market is still in its early stages from a revenue perspective," Gupta said.
Gartner expects the number of social media users will continue to increase at a moderate pace. New forms of media and entertainment will keep users engaged on social media sites and attract new ones.
Rising competition among social media players, each vying for consumers' leisure time and attention, will lead to the rise of new forms of social media (web-based and mobile).
The trend to sell high-value advisory services such as public relations and reputation management to brands so that they can better manage their presence on social networks is on the rise and is expected to continue.
Payments on social media sites will increase, providing increased revenue opportunities to social media sites to serve as a payment platform for transactions of digital content (to pay for applications, such as part of Facebook), as part of social gaming (for example, FarmVille), or to make a person-to-person (P2P) payment to another user of the network site.
New revenue opportunities for social media will also arise as both mobile and TV platforms integrate with social networking as a core service.
"New revenue opportunities will exist in social media, but no new services will be able to bring significant fresh revenue to social media by 2016," said Gupta.
"The biggest impact of growth in social media is on the advertisers. In the short and medium terms, social media sites should deploy data analytic techniques that interrogate social networks to give marketers a more accurate picture of trends about consumers' needs and preferences on a customised basis.
"In the meantime, however, they should also continue to exploit other channels of revenue like mobile advertising and social commerce," Gupta said.
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