66% of Advertisers Integrate Social Ads Into Online Campaigns

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Advertisers have reported that they are taking an integrated approach to social media advertising, according to a new Vizu survey.

About 66 percent of advertisers say they integrate paid social ads into their online campaigns. While another 51 percent say they integrate social ads into their offline marketing efforts.

According to Vizu, a Nielsen company, advertisers run paid social media ads most often with online video, online display, and mobile. Offline, advertisers reported that they are most inclined to run paid social ads with print and TV campaigns.

Around 83 percent of advertisers surveyed said they run social ads in conjunction with online display campaigns. Roughly 46 percent said they do the same with online video marketing efforts. About 40 percent also reported using social ads together with mobile advertising operations.

In the offline world, 52 percent of those surveyed reported combining print ads with paid social media campaigns. TV advertising operations were also shown to be used alongside social media ad campaigns about 37 percent of time, according to the study.

Primarily, social ads are reported to be used for branding efforts. Surveyed participants said they use social media ads for branding by a 45 percent margin. Of those respondents only 16 percent said their campaigns are primarily direct response related.

A major problem for advertisers using paid social ads is finding a proper metric for the platform. According to the study, many advertisers remained unconvinced of social media ads because of a lack of proper metrics.

"With paid social media advertising on the rise, it's no surprise that marketers are beginning to look for true measures of return on investment to justify their investment," says senior vice president of product leadership for advertising effectiveness at Nielsen Jeff Smith.

"And with paid social ads increasingly part of integrated, branding-related campaigns, there is real demand for metrics that are consistent with what they've used for other media, such as brand lift and sales lift."

Statistics for the Vizu study were gathered from survey responses from over 500 digital marketing and media firms in the field. Surveys were sent out in the fall of last year.