Despite recent research suggesting that internet marketing is on the decline, a new report claims the sector is on the up, with more brands adopting paid social media advertising than ever before – a number set to increase still in 2013.

According to report ‘Paid social media advertising: Industry update and best practices 2013’ by Nielsen company Vizu, marketers are now adjusting their campaigns to keep pace with the 121 billion minutes spent on social media each month in the US.

Of the advertisers surveyed, 89% said they use free tools such as pages, posts, likes and pins. Encouragingly for the paid advertising business, 75% said they are currently investigating paid-for options, including sponsored content, brand graphs and strategies to drive likes. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they plan to spend more on social in the future.

Budgets are set to rise, too, with 70% saying they dedicated up to 10% of their budget for paid social media advertising, and 13% dedicating more than 21% of their budget.

As 66% of advertisers use paid-for advertising alongside other online advertising, and 51% running it in conjunction with offline strategies, Vizu is right when it says the medium is “increasingly being viewed as an integrated tactic”.

View the Vizu report at the Nielsen website.