Analyzing eMarketer’s Projection For The Future Of The Social Web’s Advert Market

The ad market research specialist eMarketer let loose Friday with a few numbers we thought we’d run by you. They pertain to businesses which populate the social networking space, and offer a general estimation of what to expect (for the short term) as far as future revenue for the sub-industry as a whole.

According to the firm’s reading of the next three to four years, the supply of social networks will likely draw in ad revenue somewhere in the area of $4 billion. Mind you, that’s in total. All social networks: $4bn.

That prognosis, I must say, leaves me with quite the opposite reaction as that offered by Red Herring’s April Kilcrease. The correspondent for the technology magazine, upon learning of what is to (or may) come, opened a short piece on the matter with the rejoinder: “Maybe that $15 billion Facebook valuation is not so insane after all.” I, on the other hand, could sum up my immediate impression this way: “Zuckerberg & Co have got a long, hard slog ahead for sure.”

Of course, it’s not entirely clear what is to become of Facebook’s financial framework in the dozen or so seasons ahead. The company could perhaps transition its application marketplace into one that levies substantial fees upon users as well as third-party software and content providers. Might it also have a potent profit model in the near future that outsiders remain unaware of? Who knows. The company’s pipeline of projects in the works is hardly open for public scrutiny.

But even taking into account a reasonable supply of variables, it is nonetheless difficult to look upon the predicted figure put forth by eMarketer and think Facebook – and even several other social networks currently holding relatively sizable shares of their own – anywhere close to the point necessary to reach in order to give the company a weight it seems (and strangely so) fated to attain in the foreseeable future – a fate seemingly solidified by Microsoft’s purchase of private stock in the company earlier this year.

Let’s be clear about this. The researchers at eMarketer appear quite accurate in their showcase of the general strength of the both the current market and the market to be. $4bn market cap by 2011 is a considerable leap from where all current sites and services stand today, but it’s a logical one. That can’t be disputed. Yet the figures stipulated also seem to reign in just as a strongly any assumptions that a success such as Facebook is bound for astronomical opulence by the turn of the next decade.

In short, the social Web is growing, and is getting more and more valuable by the week. Just not at a rate commensurate with Facebook's superstar-like promotion.