Social Media in Advertising

The purpose of social media advertising is to build financially beneficial relationships with individual consumers, often by persuading them to follow an organization’s social media posts and to click or tap to specific landing pages within an organization’s website. YouTube remains the most visited social medium, with 73% of US adults reporting usage of that platform, followed by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp and Reddit. Worldwide spending on social media advertising surged past spending for print advertising in 2019, placing it behind only television and paid-search advertising expenditures. Worldwide spending for social media ads is expected to rise to almost $134 billion by 2024. Social media advertisers should familiarize themselves with the advertising-guidance sections of each social media platform. A threat to many forms of digital advertising is the growth of ad-blocking programs, which can prevent the appearance of ads in individual users’ views of websites and, to a lesser degree, in social media platforms.