We want to take this chance to wish you and your family a Happy Holiday season and the best for 2008.

Along with you, we will continue to work to make Ad Chap the best social networking advertising network out there.

Happy Holidays!

Just a quick reminder to let you know that the December volume click pricing for advertisers will be available for one more week.

In our last post we touched on the rise of social networking use among teens and adults. Another study has been released this week from Pew Internet about teens and social media. It is a good follow up and reveals more detailed information about this demographic and their use of social networking sites.

The study has found that 93% of teens (aged 12-17) use the Internet. That is an amazing number but it can be a bit misleading as the study was for American teens only, so keep that in mind as we proceed.

They go on to say that 64% of online teens (and 57% of ALL TEENS) participated in content creating activities on the Internet. What does this mean exactly? The study has detailed breakdowns that you can review but for our purposes, they are engaging in social activities and networking on the internet on a regular basis. It also found that 55% of online teens have created a profile on a social networking site like facebook or myspace. This contrasts the emarketing survey which says 70% of all teens use social networking sites. Whether it is 55% or 70% we can not tell but, we can be sure that social networking is a trend that is not to be ignored by advertisers.

In the last post we also touched on the use of email by teens, or lack thereof. The Pew Internet report finds the following:

“Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends. Despite the power that email holds among adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the communication arsenal of today’s teens. Only 14% of all teens report sending emails to their friends every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list we queried. Even among multi-channel teens, who are more likely to take advantage of any communication channel they have access to, just 22% say they send email to their friends daily. “

Teen instant messaging use is also dropping.

“the percentage of online teens who report having ever used instant messaging dropped a statistically significant amount from 75% in 2004 to 68% in 2006. This does not necessarily mean that instant messaging is declining in popularity among teens. Rather, it could be that instant messaging functionality has been integrated into so many social networking and gaming applications that teens no longer recognize instant messaging as a separate technology. “

If they are not sending emails and using instant messaging less, how are they communicating? Social networking sites of course. Sites like facebook, myspace, hi5, bebo, friendster, orkut and many smaller niche sites are their main modes of communication. Their friends are also all linked in and it is easy and convenient to access their social network to chat, send messages, post images, flirt, hang out and share info.

Not only are a higher percentage of teens using both the Internet in general and social networking sites, the frequency of their use is increasing.

“The percentage of online teens who report using the internet daily has increased from 42% in 2000 and 51% in 2004 to 61% in 2006. Among teens who go online daily, 34% use the internet multiple times a day and 27% use the internet once a day. ”

While no study is perfectly accurate, we think this gives some additional insight to teen social networking and Internet use. Social networking sites are very often an integrated part of the next generation’s lives already. If the teen demographic is your advertising target, a part of your strategy to introduce your products to them should be dedicated to advertising on social networking sites.

We hope this has been informative for you to learn about teen social networking use but do not make the mistake in thinking that it is not the only demographic using the sites. “20 somethings” to “50 somethings” use of social networking sites is quickly on the increase as well. That is another post altogether though.

The full Pew Internet report on teen social networking and media use is available here.

With the rise in popularity of social networks like facebook, bebo, hi5, myspace, linkedIn etc., advertisers are starting to realize the importance of the space.  eMarketer.com has just released a report that has some fresh new data on the social networking phenomenon.  It aggregates data from international marketers and communication researchers and provides some very interesting points about both usage and marketing spends on social networks.  Here is an overview:

- Right now 37% of adult Internet users and 70% of online teens use social networking sites monthly
- By 2011 50% of adults and 84% of teens will be using social networking sites

Social networking is not going away.  These aren’t just normal websites that people decide to go or not to go, their lives are starting to be intertwined with them.  Once someone spends the time to link in their whole network of friends and family via sites such as facebook, there is stickiness.  They are going to come back again and again, many times daily or at least weekly.  When you add in the sites features, such as posting videos, pictures and communication, these sites are becoming one stop shops for people’s online life.  For the youth, social networking sites are becoming email and instant messaging replacements, communication systems in their own right.  Email is decidedly unpopular with the younger generation for several reasons but mostly because they use facebook and myspace (or other networking sites) to communicate instead.

If 70% of online teens are using social networking sites now, there is nothing to say that they will stop using them when they enter the working world and become adults in a few years.

What about the older people (everyone that is not a teenager)?

Although the adult crowd is still using email and IM as their primary means of online communication, they are getting increasingly involved in social networking as well.  They are discovering the value of linking in their network for both personal and business reasons.  We typically hear how they love to be able to get in contact with long lost friends and business contacts.   Adults typically use social networking sites less often but we project this will also increase as well.

In summary, social networking is here to stay and already has become an online activity that is generating mass amounts of traffic.  Advertisers are starting to take notice and are looking to get in front of this sector of online traffic.

Ad Chap can help get your message out to millions of people on social networks, it is our specialty and our mission to get you the best value for your social networking advertising dollars.

As stated earlier, we have been impressed with the initial demand for the Ad Chap advertising network on facebook.  This demand initially caught us off guard however and our initial infrastructure was unable to handle the loads required.   Too much demand is a good problem to have but it has been  a little frustrating for both us and you, our customers.

We are excited to report that we have implemented an entirely new infrastructure to solve the problem.  Without going into the technical details, we are now able to deliver substantially more ads on the network.  In addition, we are set up to scale the system quickly and when demand requires.

For publishers, this will mean stability along with fast serving adds for your facebook application.  This should translate into more reliable and predictable revenue streams for the long term.

For advertisers, it means that we we will be able to increase the volume of ads delivered and get your message out to millions more facebook users.   Diversity of inventory is growing daily as new publishers come on board, this will get your ad on more and more facebook applications going forward.  Advertisers that want to take advantage of our new capacity should take a look at our new volume pricing to get the most value for your facebook advertising spend.

We want to thank both publishers and advertisers for sticking with us through our initial start up month and the associated growing pains.

For those that tried us before while we were having server problems, we invite you to give us another shot.  We are stable, back on track now and we will continue to work hard to make Ad Chap the best facebook advertising network to serve your needs.

Ad Chap is available on facebook here  http://apps.facebook.com/ad_chap/