Several year-end studies point out a gap in lead generation performance among social media sites plus significant changes ahead for social media advertisers and the websites that rely on social advertising revenue. 

According to a new study published in the Media Bistro blog, 91% of business to business marketers use Twitter, but LinkedIn generates twice as many leads.  Facebook ranked #2 in terms of leads, followed by company blogs, the story reports, while Twitter came in fourth.

The survey results arrived at the same time that two different companies announced new lead generation tools for LinkedIn.  One, according to the Digital Journal, will be available in early January and will at LinkedIn to an existing lead generation and management tool while the other to be available later in the year is a plug-in for Salesforce.com.

Also, the new BIA/Kelsey forecast  predicts that total geotargeted social media spending will jump from $400 million in 2010 to $2.3 billion in 2015. Geotargeted ads and social media marketing are critical for distributed marketing organizations where creative is centralized at the home office, but sales are made locally. 

Currently, the most popular social media advertising format, geotargeted or not, is display. This isn’t expected to change over the next few years. In fact, it’s forecast to increase to $7.7 billion in 2015, up from slightly less than $2.1 billion in 2010. Although the CAGR totals 24.2%, display’s total share of social media advertising spending will decrease to 92.8% from 97.6%. Non-display ads are expected to increase to $610 million in 2015, for a CAGR of 51.6%.  Some of the social media sites with geotargeting capabilities include Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook. According to Pew, 58% of smartphone owners use a geosocial or location-based information service.

Meanwhile, the Media Newsline reported that the Lonely Brand survey of marketing agencies found that while most were actively recommending social media advertising for their clients, just 17% purchase the ads for their own lead generation and sales promotional activities.