As social media ads continue to see excellent performance across digital platforms, Exults Internet Marketing Agency offers insight on the trend.

Although the shift to digital advertising has been underway for some time now, the challenges of 2020 have hastened the transition much more quickly than anticipated. With in-person business limited in many areas and consumer anxieties at an all-time high, companies were forced to find more creative ways to communicate with their customers. For many of them, this meant embracing advertising opportunities on social media.

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According to Marketing Dive, four in 10 consumers now check their phones every handful of minutes, something the company attributes to a desire to stay updated in the current climate. This browsing frequency presents opportunities for companies to get eyes on their brands, provided they act on a well planned marketing strategy across all digital channels.

After all, around 45% of consumers are likely to purchase brands whose ads they come across. On top of that, 31% of people who use social media used their platforms for product research — and that number was only expected to increase as of 2019.

“There is a reason this area of advertising has seen so much growth over the past several years,” said Zach Hoffman, CEO of Exults Internet Marketing Agency. “One of the primary benefits of advertising on social media is that these platforms make it easy to target specific audiences.”

Around 21% of respondents in Market Dive’s survey confirmed that the ads they came across on social media were personalized to their specific interests. That number is significantly higher than the 9% who had seen personalized television ads.

And it seems consumers are more open to advertisements from companies they are genuinely interested in. Nearly four in 10 social media users revealed that they follow companies they enjoy on their platforms of choice, decreasing the likelihood that the branded content they come across will be intrusive or unwanted. Those perceptions are unlikely to surface if whatever advertisements they are seeing are also geared toward their interests.

Studies also indicate that advertisements are the most effective means of brand discovery within a given social interface. They are more well received than celebrity and influencer support, page updates, recommendations or comments.

With global ad spend projected to hit $517 billion by 2023, it does not appear that personalized social media advertisements are going anywhere. Going forward, this is a marketing strategy savvy companies will not want to fall behind on.