Thanks to the massive popularity of Facebook and the addictive appeal of real-time simulation games, gaming on social networks has gained widespread adoption.

According to a BlogHer/iVillage study, about 22 percent of adult U.S. Internet users played casual games daily in March 2010. A study from ThinkEquity estimated that 79 million people will play social games in the U.S. in 2012, up from 47 million in 2009. As the social gaming audience continues to grow, so will revenue from direct and indirect payments and advertising, resulting in more than $720 million, according to ThinkEquity. By 2012, the market is expected to reach $2.18 billion.

U.S. direct-paying users are expected to generate $1.19 billion in revenue by 2012, up from $340 million in 2009. Indirect-paying users -- defined as those who opt-in to advertising offers attached to social games -- will inject $868 million into the industry in 2012, up from $324 million in 2009. Social game advertising revenue will double to $124 million in 2012. "Social gaming represents opportunity for marketers," said Paul Verna, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "In the coming months, expect to see more marketers muscling into the social gaming space through brand marketing tactics such as display ads, video ads, custom games, in-game enhancements, product placements and sponsorships."

At the Cannes Lions advertising festival yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to increase global brand marketing and advertising on the social network including countries across Europe where Facebook is more established. The move comes in addition to the company’s plans to expand global reach to over 1bn users worldwide.

The development comes as Facebook, which recently overtook Google as most visited website in the US, strives to turn its popularity into profit, with the aim of attracting brand advertisers such as consumer goods companies which have on the whole been less interested in internet advertising than direct-response marketers. Facebook appointed Joanna Shields to the post of VP EMEA earlier this year, who previously as chief executive of Bebo when it was sold to AOL, developed the experience in pitching social networks to advertising and marketing agencies.

Ms Shields told the Financial Times in Cannes more about the planning process behind the move. “Part of the transition we are making is we are much more focused on helping brands build their image and the conversation around Facebook,” Ms Shields plans to build on the phenomenon of TV audiences watching broadcasts while at the same time, chatting about the shows online “To me that is such an amazing opportunity to pursue,” and added. “If I was advertising in a broadcast and knew there was a large percentage of the audience talking with their friends on Facebook, I would take that really seriously.” The company plans to expand its teams in London and across Europe that go direct to agencies and major brands whilst the team in Dublin will take on online work for smaller advertisers. According to the Financial Times, Facebook’s promise to advertisers is a scale and “reach” that rivals big TV audiences, as well as a deep “engagement” with brands over much longer periods than a traditional 30-second TV ad. As reported in this blog earlier this month, Facebook’s vice-president of global sales Mike Murphy said Facebook has more than quadrupled the number of its advertiser clients since the start of 2009, and describes the company as “absolutely core to marketing campaigns”.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may no longer be worried about Twitter and its impressive growth rate – and he shouldn’t be – but that won’t keep the micro-sharing service from continuing to boast impressive growth numbers all around the world. Online analytics firm comScore noted Twitter’s overall continued growth, even based on incomplete data (third-party client users aren’t included in its numbers), and now Pingdom is doing its share by pointing out where exactly Twitter’s staggering international expansion is happening right now. The short version: just about everywhere.Pingdom took a look at Google Trends for Websites traffic data for Twitter.com to see where the service is experiencing the fastest growth in terms of monthly usage. Again, that means its findings are far more fit for deducing overall trends than they are able to accurately detail Twitter’s user numbers, since a lot of people use desktop and mobile clients for tweeting. For your information, Twitter COO Dick Costolo at the beginning of this month said they are currently at 190 million users, who are collectively posting some 65 million tweets per day. And last April, Twitter’s lead engineer for its International team, Matt Sanford, said over 60% of registered Twitter accounts were already coming from outside U.S. borders. Anyway, these are the regions Pingdom says Twitter’s traffic curve is pointing sharply upwards the most:

Latin America

The fastest growth, according to Pingdom, is in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. Notably, the real turning point seems to have been around January 2010 for all those countries. We’re not sure why – it would have been more logical to see those jumps occur in November 2009, when Twitter was made available in Spanish. As Pingdom points out, those five countries represent a potential audience of about 150 million Internet users, based on stats provided by Internet World Stats.

Asia

A second region where Twitter seems to be experiencing quite a boost is in Asia, especially in Eastern Asia, accounting for three out of the four top countries: India, Japan (where Twitter actively bolsters its presence with an office and custom ad deals), South Korea and Taiwan. Countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia also seem to be on the rise.

Pingdom pegs the total number of Internet users in the four top countries at some 230 million (about the same as the United States).

Europe and Russia

In Europe, too, Twitter seems to be attracting an increasing amount of visitors to its website, particularly in Italy, Spain and Russia. These three countries have a combined 104 million Internet users, claims Pingdom.

In conclusion: Twitter’s continued growth is undeniable, and we’ve long known this is a global phenomenon unhindered by borders or even languages. As Twitter expands its global footprint through partnerships with mobile carriers and translating its service into more languages, the service is poised for even more growth in the years to come, aided also by increasing smartphone sales and the roll-out of potent Internet and mobile data network infrastructure.

Million dollar question: will Twitter’s own infrastructure be able to sustain this growth in the long run? We’ve all seen what happened with the World Cup stampede, and it wasn’t pretty.

Pingdom tried to pinpoint which countries stand to drive Twitter’s growth the most by looking at the sharpest traffic curves, but if anything the data researched shows that Twitter is gaining ground pretty much everywhere. How long until Twitter reaches its Big Hairy Audacious Goal of becoming the pulse of the planet with 1 billion users?

50% of respondents on the client side said they expect their own company to spend more on paid search this year

Search-engine marketing continues to grow, according to a survey released this month by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) and Econsultancy, with money often being shifted from other kinds of marketing in order to fund it. But the survey's respondents (professionals in this field) say measurement of return on investment continues to be the foremost challenge for search.

Conducted online in January and February, the survey was promoted to members of SEMPO and of Econsultancy, the latter a digital publishing and training group with a broad membership among Internet professionals. Nearly 1,500 respondents participated, of whom about two-thirds were on the supplier side, including various sorts of agencies (digital shops, search specialists, general agencies, etc.) and consultancies.

Fifty percent of respondents on the client side said they expect their own company to spend more on paid search this year than last. On average, these respondents foresee their companies' spending on paid search increasing 37 percent this year. As for search-engine optimization (SEO), 52 percent of client respondents expect their companies to boost spending, with expenditures seen rising an average of 43 percent vs. 2009. The report of the findings estimates that revenues for the search-engine-marketing industry as a whole will grow 14 percent this year, to $16.6 billion.

With many small firms providing search services of one sort or another, the amount of billings each of them takes in can be pretty small. In paid search, 41 percent of agency/consultancy respondents expect their own firm's billings to be under $100,000 this year. In SEO, 47 percent expect billings this year under that threshold.

IN-HOUSE VS. OUT-OF-HOUSE
Moreover, client companies handle much of their search efforts on their own. In paid search, for example, 47 percent of client-side respondents said they "primarily" handle the work in-house. Fourteen percent use a "paid-search specialist," 14 percent a "search agency," 8 percent a "digital marketing agency," 6 percent an "advertising agency," 5 percent an "SEO specialist," 3 percent a Web-design agency," 1 percent a "PR agency," 1 percent a "social-media specialist" and 1 percent "other." The pattern was similar with respect to SEO work, with 51 percent of client-side respondents saying this is handled primarily in-house. Just 2 percent said their SEO work is primarily handled by the general category of "advertising agency."

Does the fact that general agencies conduct so little of client respondents' search work mean search is at risk of being isolated from (rather than closely coordinated with) a company's overall marketing program? "Hopefully, all of a client's agencies are talking together," says Sara Holoubek, president of SEMPO and CEO of her own strategic consultancy, Luminary Labs. "Obviously, the marketing works better if they all play nicely in the sandbox together." She acknowledges, though, that this is not always the reality.

And why do the general agencies cede much of the search work to specialized agencies and consultancies? Holoubek sees this as a legacy of the period in which big agencies and holding companies treated search "as an afterthought. That's why you see such a diverse collection of companies on the supply side," even though the big agencies have more recently taken steps to get up to speed (or to buy specialist shops) in this field. For that matter, she says, "Some clients may want a very, very specialized, dedicated provider" when it comes to conducting their search efforts.

WHERE DOES THE MONEY COME FROM?
In this period of severely constrained budgets, where are clients finding the money to fund their search efforts? In paid search, 30 percent of client respondents said it's "newly allocated budget specifically for paid search," while 25 percent said it's "money shifted away from other marketing budgets" and 45 percent that it's a combination of the two. For SEO, 39 percent said it's new money, 19 percent said it's money shifted from other marketing budgets, 9 percent said it's "money shifted from other Web site programs" and 33 percent said it's a combination of these.

When money is shifted into search from elsewhere in the marketing budget, what takes the hit? A plurality of client respondents (49 percent) and an outright majority of those on the agency/consultancy side (69 percent) pointed to print. It's not that search is inherently a predator vis-à-vis spending in traditional media. At the moment, though, with budgets often shrinking, it seems like a zero-sum game. "I think if it weren't for the recession, we wouldn't be talking about where the money is coming from," says Holoubek, especially since these old and new media ought to be working in concert. "In an ideal world, you have this virtuous circle in which media like TV and print create demand, and search captures it," she says.

Wherever the money comes from, its allocation to search had better pay off. But determining whether it is doing so remains a challenge for search, just as it is for any other form of marketing. When respondents were asked to identify the "greatest challenges" they confront in managing their paid search efforts, "measuring the ROI" garnered the most mentions from people on the client side (43 percent) and the agency/consultancy side (40 percent). The runner-up in each case was "optimizing destination pages." Measurement of ROI also was atop the list (in a tie with "optimizing destination pages," at 42 percent each) when client-side respondents were asked to cite the biggest challenges they face in running their SEO efforts. On the agency/consultancy side, measuring ROI tied (at 40 percent apiece) with "staying abreast of search engines' indexing algorithms and technologies."

DEFINING THE OBJECTIVES
Of course, measuring return on investment entails knowing just what it is you want that investment to accomplish. What do companies want from their SEO efforts? For client-side respondents, the highest number of mentions as "most important" went to "generate leads" (34 percent) and "drive traffic to Web site" (32 percent). That's in sync with agency/consultancy respondents' sense of what their clients want to accomplish, with "generate leads" (35 percent) and "drive traffic to Web site" (30 percent) getting the most mentions. With regard to the objectives of paid-search efforts, client-side respondents gave the most votes to "sell products, services or content directly online" (39 percent) and to "generate leads" (37 percent). Here again, that's consistent with what agency/consultancy respondents said, with "sell products, services or content directly online" cited by 43 percent and "generate leads" by 40 percent.
 
With social media drawing more and more attention from marketers, the survey sought to gauge opinion of search professionals on how this might be affecting their work. On the client side, 33 percent of respondents agreed that "Social media is very much part of our search activity." Significantly more of the agency/consultancy respondents (48 percent) agreed that this is the case. Likewise, agency/consultancy respondents were more likely than their client-side counterparts to agree that the rise of social media has had an impact on their search efforts, 74 percent vs. 52 percent.