eMarketer predicts that $2 Billion will be spent this year (2008) on social network advertising worldwide and that this market will continue to grow - reaching $3.8 billion in spending by 2011. However, a large portion of this spending is predicted to be coming from the US market. As Internet usage continues to grow in other parts of the world, and social networks continue to proliferate, advertising dollars on social networking sites outside of the US will begin to play a major role.
There have been many claims that Social Network Advertising will revolutionize the online advertising market. Most famously, founder of facebook Mark Zuckerberg, announced that "For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation." There is no doubt that social network advertising is a significant new way of reaching customers, however the market is far from being mature.
"In general, it's been improving but we still have a long way to go. Things have been going well this year...it's hard to predict where social networking will come out." - Sergey Brin (Google Co-Founder)



