Media Spend Predicted to shift to Social

Digital ad spending is rising year on year right now – and an increasingly large chunk of that is being spent on social. We are beginning to see budgets that prioritise spending on social media influencers, for example, as a key way to leverage brand positioning on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Given the increasing numbers of social media users, and the way that platforms like Tiktok have taken off over the past year or so, the forecasts are all for a shift to social when it comes to media spend.

20% of spend is set to shift

According to experts, over the course of 2022, 20% of media spend is forecast to move to social. Ad channels like TV are likely to be passed over in favour of paid social that has the potential to provide a more positive, trackable and effective return. However, we’re also likely to see a more integrated approach with many organisations moving away from the idea that ad channels should be kept separate. Some insiders predict the fall of siloes, with social media marketing, such as influencer marketing, being integrated across many other types of marketing channels too as the year goes on.

This is the year that analytics get serious

Many brands have previously used analytics more as a vanity boost than anything else but 2022 is going to be the year in which we start to get serious where analytics are concerned. That means moving away from focusing on likes and shares (these are the ‘vanity’ metrics) and towards integrating point-of-sale Google Analytics, for example. This comes alongside the jump to social being made by many big brands, which is partly responsible for driving up spend on paid social. For example, we couldn’t have predicted that big financial brands would have been using channels like TikTok to reach their audiences – but that’s exactly what’s happening. With more focus on investment in paid social by an increasingly broad range of businesses, analytics will evolve to support that.

The year of the creators

As influencers start to take centre stage in supporting brands looking to reach a specific target audience there is much more scope for expanding creativity in social ads. We’ve moved away from the idea of influencers as those with big accounts that will appeal to generic audiences and towards niche influencers that are a perfect match with individual brands and the target customers they are trying to reach. As more spend is poured into social this year, creators will get more free licence to explore a range of methods of reaching people with posts about products, offers, events etc. As a result, we’re going to see an explosion in social creativity as new voices, new ideas and new tools and techniques start to emerge to support this.

The forecasts for 2022 indicate that this is going to be a year in which we see significant media spend shift to social, especially where investing in influencers is concerned. Find out how Iconic Digital can help your businesses advertising across all ads, get in touch today and call us on 020 7100 0726. Find out more about our Paid Advertising agency in London.