BIA/Kelsey is out with a new forecast that projects how U.S. social media ad revenues will reach $9.2 billion within four years.
By 2016, revenues will climb from $4.6 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of 19.2 percent.
And don’t forget about local. Advertisers certainly haven’t. According to the data and projections released today, the local segment of U.S. social media advertising revenues will grow from $1.1 billion in 2012 to $3 billion in 2016.
“The year 2012 can be viewed as social advertising’s ‘coming of age,'” says Jed Williams, program director at BIA/Kelsey. “The continued development of native ads, such as Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, and the acceleration of mobile monetization will be the primary drivers of social advertising growth through 2016.”
Not surprisingly, the forecast also identifies mobile as a key growth area for social media.
BIA/Kelsey estimates social-mobile ad revenues will increase from $500 million in 2012 to $1.5 billion in 2016.
“A variety of forces will influence this growth,” the report reads, “including rapid social-mobile consumer usage growth, active experimentation by vendors and deep integration of native ad units on the platform.”