Brands up their ad spend on blogs, social media

Some recently published Nielsen stats show that, at least in the States, advertising on blogs and social media is up, even in industry sectors where online ads have seen a (I assume recessionary) decline.

Nielsen estimates that in the US, total blog and social media ad spend has gone up from 7% in August 2008 to 15% in August 2009. Online ad spending for sectors such as travel, automotive and software is down as a whole, but up significantly on social network sites.

Nielsen also raises the question of whether targeted social media ad spending can work, something that’s been a key concern in the past, and suggests that for certain industry sectors it can. According to VP John Gibbs: “Advertisers that want to connect with core fan bases, such as movie studios, are allocating more and more dollars to dnline communities like Facebook and MySpace, where they can engage in an ongoing dialog with their target market.”

Though it doesn’t give any details of figures, the Marketing Charts article where I pulled this from specifically mentions blogs as well.

One of the main arguments for bloggers to participate in what’s called ‘sponsored posts‘ (ie advetorials) has been the need for them to make money from their sites. The increased appetite for brands to go social with their ads, would seem to point to straight-forward advertising being something bloggers can increasingly take advantage of.