Looking back on 2007, I think that there is no debating that social media and user generated content were important components of the overall online media market and that they will only be increasing in significance over the coming years. After all, it has been fairly widely published that social media properties account for somewhere between 20% and 30% of all page views online and nearly 45% of all time spent online. However, advertising spend on social media is less than 2% of total online advertising expenditures. The poor performance of the monetization models that have been attempted to date is well documented. But I believe that there are a few models that are emerging that have the potential for success because they may do a better job of engaging and targeting the right audience. Of course, more compelling advertising creatives, specifically designed for the social media environment, are as important for engaging consumers as is the monetization approach.  

Here are a few models that I hope to see being tested by startups over the next few months. The models have potential for all types of social media sites, including social networks, media-sharing sites, virtual worlds, etc. 

–         Leveraging the various types of data available from a social media site to target audiences, rather than context or page views, on the site. Clearly, the content alone from social media sites hasn’t been valuable enough information on which to base ad targeting.  But combining context with other data, including user activity, demographics and geography, and potentially even sharing that across social media sites, could yield strong results for delivery of advertising, commerce and content.

–         Consumer endorsement of brands, products or content that begins by providing them with value from and control over the messaging initiated by them and their activities. Widgets and RSS are powerful tools to be used within this word-of-mouth-marketing model, which helps advocates and influencers spread the word about the things with which they associate themselves.

–         Mining social media to better target audiences on non-social media properties. The participatory nature of social media makes it an incredibly rich platform from which to extract targeting data that is unavailable elsewhere on the web. This provides a unique opportunity for social media sites to share that data (in a privacy-friendly way) with other web publishers so that value can be generated for both groups. 

I expect 2008 to be the year in which clear monetization models emerge for the social media properties that experienced fantastic growth in 2007 (eMarketer has one or two forecasts of its own). My somewhat belated resolution is to support those companies that are taking innovative approaches to generating sustainability for a thriving, important and exciting medium.