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Breaking marketing professionals down into three key categories, agencies (44%) are twice as likely as either marketers (27%) or marketing service professionals (MSPs, 26%) to say they report regularly to management on the social media conversations happening around client brands.

Forty percent of both marketers and MSPs are using a few ad hoc tools, compared to 35% of agencies. About one-third of MSPs (32%) and marketers (30%) say they have little understanding about social media conversations, compared to one-fifth (21%) of agencies. No agencies say they have no understanding, compared to 2% of MSPs and 3% of marketers.

Respondents in other geographic regions (30%) are less likely than North American (39%) and European (42%) respondents to say they are using a few ad-hoc tools to follow social media conversations happening around their (or client) brands. Interestingly, European respondents are least likely to say they report regularly to management (26%, compared to 29% of the rest of the world and 31% of North America).

The rest of the world has the highest rate of saying they only have a little understanding of social media conversations (36%, compared to 29% of Europe and 28% of North America) and no understanding (5%, compared to 3% of Europe and 2% of North America).

When it comes to creating personalized customer experiences, email is at the front of the pack with 72% of respondents selecting this as a focus. Direct mail (58%), website (56%), and social media (53%) campaigns are all personalized by between 50-60%, indicating that approximately one-fourth do not customize the marketing experience for any one channel. However, only 9% admit to not personalizing any channel, which shows the vast majority focus on creating a customized experience for at least one.

The trend of a personalized customer experience is clearly important, but Alterian analysis indicates it seems that the majority need some help seeing the value in executing this strategy across multiple channels.

Three-fourths of those surveyed estimate their social/digital marketing expenditure will increase during the next year, with one-fourth overall projecting it will increase greatly (25% or more), according to other study results. Alterian says the estimated growth above and beyond overall marketing expenditure projection is indicative that social/digital marketing will drive general marketing growth in the coming year.

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There are only so many hours per day that consumers can spend watching TV, reading newspapers and surfing the internet. But as marketers may suspect, the time devoted to media is undergoing some not-so-subtle changes.

eMarketer recently conducted a meta-analysis of data from dozens of research firms using a variety of methodologies. The result is a series of estimates of how much time consumers spend with all major media, regardless of multitasking or simultaneous usage, from 2008 to 2010. The estimates apply to average media usage of the general public, not solely to the users of each medium.

The average time spent with all major media combined increased from about 10.6 hours in 2008 to 11 hours in 2010, according to eMarketer. TV and video (not including online video) captured the lion’s share of all media time, about 40% each year. The internet’s share of media time increased over the same period, from 21.5% to 23.5%, as did mobile’s share, from 5% to 7.5%. The share of time spent with magazines and newspapers fluctuated between 10% and 7.5%, while radio and all other media—video games, movies in theaters and outdoor media—declined.

To account for multitasking, an hour spent watching TV and surfing the internet was counted as 1 hour for TV plus 1 hour for internet use. Also, use of each medium is discrete: Time spent listening to the radio does not include streaming stations from the internet, for example.

In 2010, consumers spent an average of 4 hours and 24 minutes each day watching TV and video, while being online for 2 hours and 35 minutes. Mobile devices received an average of 50 minutes’ worth of attention every day—the same amount of time allotted to newspapers and magazines combined. eMarketer expects that time spent with mobile devices will continue to increase, most likely taking time away from print media.

In fact, time spent with mobile devices is rising faster than all other media. In 2010, consumers spent 28.2% more time with mobile devices, which covers all mobile activities on all mobile devices. That gain was even higher than the 21.9% growth in 2009. Time spent on the internet showed moderate but steady gains, at more than 6% each year since 2008. All other major media posted declines: TV and video lost 1.1% in 2010, while magazines and newspapers lost 9.1% each. However, as consumers continue to consume more media every day, those losses are not immediately significant.

Marketers need to pay attention to these trends as they project budgets and develop marketing strategies for the coming year—and years. Mobile devices will claim more and more media time per day, while TV, print and radio will slowly lose ground to digital media. Those trends have been most apparent with print media in recent years, but are now beginning to show up in TV and radio usage as well.

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About one-quarter of mobile advertising campaign actions in October 2010 led to social media post-click, according to the October 2010 Millennial Media SMART Report.

Social media, as a post-click campaign action, represented 26% of the mobile campaign actions in October 2010. The top advertisers on the Millennial network from the finance, automotive, entertainment and retail verticals leveraged the social media platform to drive further brand engagement, as well as lead generation.

Retail promotion and m-commerce as post-click campaign actions experienced tremendous growth month-over-month with a 13% and 8% increase, respectively. Millennial analysis shows the increase is tied to brands in the retail and CPG verticals developing promotions to drive increased holiday sales through mobile advertising.

Traffic to Site continued to be the top destination for brands advertising on mobile and represented a 42% impression share in October 2010. Custom Landing page as a campaign destination grew slightly to represent 40% share of impressions.

More than eight in 10 (82%) of campaigns on the Millennial network drove to these two mobile web destinations, providing further validation that brands are finding value in maintaining a persistent mobile web presence.

The trend of advertisers leveraging targeted-audience campaign methods (GEO, Demographic, Behavioral Audience and Audience Takeover) continued for the fifth consecutive month, with 44% of campaigns on the Millennial network leveraging these methods.

Broad reach methods (Run of Network, Custom Subnet and Channel) represented 56% of the campaign targeting mix in October 2010. These methods are recommended for broad-reaching brand campaigns and brands first entering the mobile space.

Audience takeover as a targeting method accounted for 7% of the targeted audience mix in October 2010. Millennial data indicates brands in the entertainment and CPG verticals utilized this targeting method to achieve 100% share of voice for new movie releases and product launches.

The restaurant vertical received a significant 51% spike in mobile interaction during the four-day Thanksgiving weekend (November 25-28, 2010), likely due to consumers seeking a break from cooking after preparing a large holiday meal. CPG had a 31% mobile interaction lift, which Millennial analysis indicates resulted from consumers seeking cooking tips on the actual Thanksgiving holiday.

The movie sub-vertical of entertainment received a 31% lift as consumers sought options to amuse themselves on their day off, which also probably led to a 19% spike in mobile access of dating sites.

Looking at a variety of retail-related consumer mobile activities, text coupons lead both in terms of current engagement (25%) and planned engagement in the next 12 months (47%), according to a recent study from IHL Group. Probably due to the high percentage of consumers who will already be using mobile text coupons within 12 months, planned engagement within 12 to 24 months is only 9%, tied for second-lowest with consumer self-checkout.

The other two retail-related consumer mobile activities currently used by more than 20% of mobile phone subscribers are regular barcode (22%) and 2D barcode (21%). Coupons on mobile screen only have 16% current engagement, but 38% planned engagement within the next 12 months, second only to text coupons in this category.

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Brands and marketers have different levels of participation in the social media space, but many have similar goals and strategies. The “2010 Social Media Benchmarking Study” from Ketchum and FedEx found when looking at 62 study participants from a variety of industries that 100% had some degree of social media presence.

But they demonstrated different engagement levels, including observers who are determining how to best use social media and leaders who push boundaries and innovate.

Yet objectives for social media were uniform across the industries and engagement levels. Some common goals were to generate word-of-mouth advocacy, develop brand loyalty and close relationships with customers, manage customer service issues, and educate the media and public about company-related issues. This supports data from SmartBrief and Summus, which found that 94% of brands hoped to increase awareness and interaction with consumers by using social media.

The Ketchum-FedEx study discussed how companies could still achieve their social media objectives, whatever their engagement levels, noting that it was not necessary to always be a leader in the social media space. Companies should look at their goals and figure out if being a close follower or even an observer for a bit would be better suited to help its business.

One element that helps achieve social media goals discussed by both studies is integration of social media strategy into an overall communications and marketing plan. Thanks to the transparency, interactivity and informality of social media, collaboration between communications, IT, legal and marketing is a necessity to make a holistic plan work and bear fruit.

For more information about social media’s place at the marketing table, stay tuned for the forthcoming eMarketer report, “Social Media in the Marketing Mix.”

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Is 2011 set to be the “year of Facebook,” even among search marketers? Based on what US advertisers told search marketing agency Covario, it’s definitely the year of social.

Search marketers have discovered how social media marketing can help build their search engine optimization efforts, and respondents to the Covario survey said their No. 1 priority for SEO next year was integration with social media programs. According to the report, “leveraging social media for scalable link-building efforts is a major initiative for advertisers.”

Social media will also play an important part in paid search efforts next year. Search ad campaigns on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn were top of mind for nearly half of advertisers surveyed—far ahead of priorities like local search or dealing with recent changes to major search engines (for example, Google Instant and Yahoo!-Bing integration).

The report noted that major spending increases on Facebook search advertising are planned for 2011. Covario estimated many advertisers would be spending 10% to 20% of their pay-per-click budgets on Facebook next year, giving the social networking site a major share of that market. The report also indicated that rather than pulling dollars away from other paid search spending areas, these would be additions to the search budget coming from display or offline budgets instead.

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eMarketer estimates that 127 million people in the US, or 57.5% of internet users, will use social networks at least monthly this year. Facebook alone has over half a billion active users worldwide. Still, many of the smallest businesses don’t believe their customers can be marketed to on such sites, according to an August 2010 survey from customer review platform RatePoint.

Respondents, the majority of whom were business owners with just one to five employees, were split on whether social media was a quick way to connect with current or future customers, but sentiment was largely negative. When asked if they thought customers wanted to hear from them on social sites, only a quarter of businesses thought they did.

In addition, 20% of small businesses did not think their customers spent time on social networking sites; another 27% were undecided. And nearly a quarter did not believe their customers did research online before doing business with their company.

With a majority of US internet users on social networks, chances are the customers of even small local businesses are there. According to BIA/Kelsey and ConStat, 97% of US internet users used online media to look for local products and services in Q1 2010, and 90% used search engines. Research from comScore and TMP Directional Marketing shows that, looking for local businesses, searchers are much more likely to use a search engine than a social networking site as their primary resource, but both are used, especially among young people.

“Social media use is no longer limited to one demographic; everyone is adopting,” said Neal Creighton, CEO and co-founder of RatePoint, in a statement. “While many small-business owners are uncertain, big brands are investing heavily in social media. Social media can be a great equalizer for small businesses to compete alongside larger brands and SMBs are missing out if they are not involved.”

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According to the American Express OPEN fall 2010 “Small Business Monitor,” small-business owners have dramatically upped their usage of social media for marketing in the past year.

While just one in 10 business owners reported using social networking for marketing last year, 39% indicated they did in September 2010. The impetus is driving sales by connecting with consumers. Facebook was the clear leader among small-business owners, with 27% using the site to attract new customers, vs. 9% using LinkedIn, 8% using Twitter and 5% maintaining a blog.

American Express found that among businesses that use social media marketing, 39% said it increased the exposure of their business. But the second most common response, selected by 17%, was that social media tools had not helped them.

“For business owners, social media ultimately should be a two-way street. It’s about business owners connecting with customers and customers connecting with businesses,” said Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, in a statement. “More than 10% of consumers we surveyed reported posting a review of a small business through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, and of these posts, two-thirds say the reviews have been positive.”

But many small businesses still feel social media marketing has nothing to offer them. More than three in five reported not using social media at all, and the biggest reason they gave was that it did not apply to their industry.

A September survey of small businesses that have advertising relationships with local newspapers by ITZ Belden and the American Press Institute (API) similarly found that 40% of respondents used social media marketing. Just 20% said it was a leading source of new business, compared with 77% who cited referrals from customers and 65% who selected referrals from friends and family.

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Consumers of traditional media sources such as print and TV tend to be older than online media consumers, according to results of a new 24/7 Wall St./Harris Poll conducted by Harris Interactive.

55-plus See Most Need for Traditional Media
Overall, 81% of survey respondents said although printed news will continue to decline, there will always be a need for news in print. However, this figures is highest (87%) among respondents older than 55 and lowest (76%) among respondents 18-34 and 35-44.
More telling is the fact that while 67% of overall respondents still prefer to get their news from traditional sources, this figure jumps to 81% for 55-plus and drops to only 57% for 18-34.

Conversely, 50% of 18-to-34-year-olds tend to get almost all of their news online, compared to only 33% of those 55 and older.

Older Consumers Visit Traditional News Sources More Often
For all forms of traditional news media, older consumers are more likely to visit either all the time or occasionally than younger consumers, with the widest discrepancy existing between the oldest and youngest consumers.

For example, while 76% of overall respondents at least occasionally consume local TV news, this figure is 88% of 55-plus but only 63% of 18-34. Similar trends can be observed for local newspapers and network TV news. The discrepancy narrows a bit for cable TV news (60% overall, 67% of 55-plus, 51% of 18-34).

There is a milder reverse discrepancy when looking at usage of new news media sources. The widest difference exists in consumption of websites for national newspapers (36% overall, 40% of 18-34, 30% of 55-plus).

Older Consumers Increase Time with TV News
Consumers age 55 and older are more likely to have increased the time they spend watching cable TV news and network TV news in the past year than consumers 18-34 (rates of 22% and 17% compared to rates of 13% and 12%, respectively).

However, in addition to the expected higher rates of increasing consumption of new media such as visiting online news and information sites among younger consumers (29% of 18-34 compared to 22% of 55-plus), younger consumers are also more likely to have increased consumption of many traditional media, such as radio (24% of 18-34 compared to 13% of 55-plus).

Internet Dominates Young Adult Media Time
American young adults spend more time online than consuming other forms of media, according to a new study from Edison Research. “Radio’s Future II: The 2010 American Youth Study” indicates that during an average day, Americans age 12-24 spend two hours and 52 minutes on the internet, making the web the media format American young adults spend the most time consuming. Television closely follows with a daily average of two hours and 47 minutes.

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Social media is not making users less social, despite popular contrary opinion, according to a new white paper from ExactTarget and CoTweet.

Increased SocNet Use Leads to Increased Face-to-Face Interaction
“Social Mythbusting” research shows that individuals who are becoming more active on Facebook and Twitter are also interacting with friends in “real” (not virtual) settings more often, despite assertions to the contrary from many industry observers. ExactTarget data shows that among consumers increasing Facebook use, 27% are meeting friends in person more and only 13% are meeting friends less. The same consumers increasing Facebook use are calling friends on the phone more and less often (19% each).

Consumers increasing Twitter use show results substantially more skewed to increased personal interaction. Forty-six percent are meeting friends in person more and only 7% less, while 33% are calling friends on the phone more and 13% less.

Big Names Aren’t Leading to Increased Twitter Usage
Although an increasing number of celebrities are joining Twitter, ExactTarget research shows that they have not increased Twitter use among most people. In the last six months, across the 12 types of Twitter users identified by ExactTarget, only a range of 8-18% are using Twitter more. Meanwhile, the range of those saying they are using Twitter less varies from 10%-45%.

Facebook Fans’ Worth Hard to Measure
Recent findings from Syncapse indicate that the average Facebook fan is worth $136.38 to a brand and Facebook fans spend an average of an extra $71.84 on a product. However, previous ExactTarget research indicates only 17% of US consumers reported that they’re more likely to buy as a result of liking a brand.

So while Syncapse’s study does establish the average annual spend of a Facebook fan, ExactTarget advises it doesn’t suggest the increase in value that can be attributed to Facebook, since many of these consumers have already reached their limit to purchase additional products, goods, or services from brands.

ExactTarget recommends that marketers must resist the temptation to view Facebook as merely an acquisition or loyalty channel, where number of fans is directly linked to ROI. Fans are a valuable part of a marketing strategy, but must be empowered to act as viral advocates for a brand with their own friends and contacts.

6 in 10 SocNet Users Feel More Connected
Six in 10 (59%) of social network users say they feel more connected to people now than previously, according to a recent Harris Poll. That figure is highest among 18-to-34-year-olds (63%) and females (61%). Similar percentages (58% overall, 63% of 18-to-34-year-olds, 60% of females) say they keep in touch with friends more now than in the past.

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The ongoing migration to digital media is damaging traditional media categories more than expected, according to a new white paper from PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Digital Migration Slams Publishing, Radio
The annual decline in 2009 revenues in several traditional media categories was more severe than originally forecast, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers research. Most striking was the decline in out-of-home revenues, which fell approximately 13% in 2009, compared to a forecast of about 7%. In addition, radio revenues declined about 9%, compared to an approximately 7% forecast.

The other two media categories which had a 2009 revenue decline more severe than originally predicted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers were newspaper publishing (approximately 12% compared to a forecast of slightly more than 10%) and consumer magazine publishing (about 11% compared to a forecast of about 9%).

Most Digital Categories Grow Beyond Expectations
In contrast, most digital media categories which experienced annual revenue growth in 2009 increased more than originally forecast. Most significantly, internet advertising revenues, which were predicted to decline about 3% in 2009, rose about 4%.

In addition, revenue growth significantly outpaced expectations in categories such as internet access (about 8% compared to a forecast slightly more than 5%) and filmed entertainment (3% compared to about 1%).

The only exception was the revenue stream from video games, which only grew about 3%, compared to a forecast of about 8%. PriceWaterhouseCoopers analysis suggests this was primarily due to a number of high-profile developers delaying the release of new games originally scheduled for 2009.

Print Media Ad Spending Mostly Lags
Print media, on the whole, continued to lag the overall ad market in Q1 2010, according to recent data from Kantar Media. Consumer Magazine spending fell 3.9% from a year ago, while Local Newspapers dropped 5.6%. There was improvement in some narrow segments, as Sunday Magazine expenditures jumped 13.7% and National Newspapers increased 9.1%, primarily from gains at the Wall Street Journal, according to Kantar.