80% of small businesses plan to use social media by the end of 2012, according to Borrell Associates, an advertising tracking company. This level of engagement means that small business social media ad spending is about to explode. Borrell predicts that collective ad spending on sites like Facebook will increase sevenfold (totaling about $7.8 billion) over the next five years. Most small businesses are using social media advertising as a means to attract new consumers:

It’s interesting to look at the data and see that “sales” is not the top item in measurement for local small businesses...Not that the local small businesses don’t expect sales, but they seem to know that building new relationships with new customers will do that automatically.  New customers are the key return on social media.

Businesses that stand to gain the most from social media advertising are those in “consumer-facing, high-interaction” industries, such as restaurants and entertainment venues.

Click here to read the full article in Media Life Magazine.