In an April 2012 report, global media investment management firm GroupM estimated that this year the average B2C ecommerce spending per user in both countries in North America will break the $1,000 threshold.

Since 2009, the average amount US internet users spent annually shopping online has increased roughly $100 per year. This year, GroupM projects the average US internet user will spend $1,042 on ecommerce, with those in Canada trailing slightly, at $1,009 on average.

Even using a broad definition of B2C ecommerce, GroupM’s 2012 projection for average spending per user in the US is lower than eMarketer’s, which focuses more narrowly on average online retail sales per US internet user ages 14 and up ($1,042 vs. $1,497). Though the estimates differed in their average values, their projected year-over-year growth were within one-tenth of a percentage point of one another. eMarketer projects 10.5% growth from 2011 to 2012 in average US retail ecommerce sales per internet user; GroupM forecasts 10.4% growth in average B2C ecommerce spending this year.

The average B2C ecommerce spending per internet user in the US will continue to climb through 2015, but projections from eMarketer suggest companies should not expect such steep increases beyond 2012.

eMarketer predicts US B2C ecommerce sales will total $343.4 billion by the end of this year, up 13.8% from 2011. Beyond 2012, annual growth rates will decline by about 1 percentage point each year as the US online population nears full penetration and the US B2C ecommerce market reaches maturity.

Though, according to GroupM, US users will spend just slightly more than their counterparts in Canada this year on ecommerce (a difference of $33), the firm expects advertisers to spend an average of $60 more per user to target US consumers in 2012. Compared to 2011, the US average ad spending per user is expected to rise 7.4% to $174; Canada will see a 4.6% increase in ad spending per user to $114.

By 2015, eMarketer anticipates the gap in online ad spending per internet user in the two countries will narrow, with average online ad spending per US internet user expected to reach $192 vs. $149 per average internet user in Canada. eMarketer estimates US online ad spending per user accounted for only 26.9% of total media ad spending per user in 2011, but that portion will increase to 35% by 2015 in the US. In Canada, it will follow a similar grow trajectory from 2011 through 2015: 27.6% to 36.6%.

Such trends signify the health of the ecommerce industry, yet they also suggest a a growing recognition of the influence that online advertising has on offline purchases. And in the next few years, as the use of multichannel attribution analysis becomes more common in the digital ad industry, percentages may shift as marketers acquire more hard data.

Pinterest surged into the spotlight earlier this year when it was revealed that it drives more web traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined. What’s so compelling about a website that lets you make virtual bulletin boards of “pinned” images, observers wondered, and does this service now belong in the pantheon of must-use social tools like Facebook and Twitter? Perhaps most important, marketers are asking, is this something that will drive revenue?

Not long after the Pinterest spike, my employer, Emily Carr University, and research firm Vision Critical recruited 500 Pinterest users from the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia, to talk about their pinning habits.

The results: Pinterest users reported a surprisingly high correlation between pinning and subsequent purchasing: more than 1 in 5 Pinterest users has pinned an item that they later purchased. In the social world, this is a high conversion rate.

Surprisingly, the correlation between pinning and offline purchasing (16%) was stronger than the correlation between pinning and online purchasing (12%). (The overall number of people who have pinned and then purchased comes to 21%, because some purchased both ways.)

The people who are purchasing pin three times as many items (59) each month as non-purchasers (19). No wonder: the purchasers visit Pinterest almost three times as often, 27 times a month, compared to an average 10 for non-purchasers.

More than 60% of these purchasers joined Pinterest before January 2012, in other words, before the hype. This could be because they are more loyal early adopters or because those who’ve joined since haven’t had as much time to convert their activity to buying. Probably, it’s some combination of both. Click the image below for an infographic representation of the survey results.

View infographic

It’s hard to assess any causal relationship between pinning and purchasing. Are people buying because they pin, or pinning what they always intended to buy? Still, the implications for marketers are clear: Pinning, especially among loyal, active Pinterest users, is intimately intertwined with buying. Pinning is a signal that says, “I’m thinking of purchasing your product”.

If you’re already running a social media customer relations team, you’re well positioned to respond. At a minimum, your team should be monitoring the Pinterest page that shows every item pinned from your site(s): http://pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com. Take a peek at what that page looks like for brand like Adidas or Michael’s and you get an instant snapshot of the opportunities for moving customers from pinning to purchase.

Pinboard names also offer clues about how seriously your customers are considering a purchase: in general, anything with “lust” or “inspiration” in the title implies fantasy rather than purchase intent, while lists named for specific product categories (“red shoes”) usually read like pre-purchase shortlists. Work from these clues to reach out to customers with product information or discounts and promotions. But, take care to avoid being intrusive or creepy: if Sarah posts your product to her “Birthday Wishlist” pinboard, it’s not your job to look at her Facebook profile, find the name of her boyfriend, and let him know you’re happy to help him get that perfect gift.

At a higher level, our research on Pinterest speaks to the necessity of asking some tough questions about any new social media platform, and taking a data-driven approach to finding the answers.

After all, there has been a Pinterest every year for the past decade. If you cringe like I do at the memory of joining Second Life, you know how hard it is to resist the siren song of the Cool New Social Web Thing. Investing some personal time in CNSWTs can help you get inside the heads of the customers who are spending time there, and to understanding the social media zeitgeist, but taking the leap from personal interest to brand investment requires a much higher threshold of confidence. To justify a real resource commitment (dollars, technology, time) a new platform has to demonstrate that it’s moving the dial on one of your key metrics, whether it’s your total revenue, your average cost of sale or production, or simply the number of applications you get in response to each job ad.

Knowing the relationship between platform and metrics isn’t just a matter of proving ROI, but rather, crucial to aligning your strategy for a new social media platform with the strategy for that part of your business it can reasonably be expected to enhance. To achieve that kind of alignment, you have to go beyond the aggregated stats on visits and users that any trending platform produces to dazzle its potential business audience. You have to hear about the platform’s impact from the users themselves.

Below are some tips written by Jeff Bullas that may help social media marketing managers convert their community into customers.

5 Ways to Turn Facebook Likes into Marketing Results

Marketers today need to go beyond just getting Likes and create real engagement opportunities that keep their business top of mind with their loyal customers and make it really easy for them to share with their networks and friends.  While an increased number of Likes leads to a bigger audience for you to market to on Facebook, it’s only the first step in deriving real value from your investment in social media marketing.

The following are five things you can do to help turn Likes into real results on Facebook.

1. Create a compelling offer

This may sound like a no-brainer, yet all too often campaigns miss the mark because they’re not aligned with the interests of customers. Before you send out that offer, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself if you would act on it. If you find that it’s more skewed to benefiting your business as opposed to providing a real benefit to your customer, you may need to rethink the parameters of the offer. If an offer is designed with the customer in mind, they’re more likely to respond and tell their friends about it.

2. Build a full campaign plan

The most successful campaigns on Facebook span a two-to-three week period. During this time, there is a cadence that flows around publishing, promoting and driving action. Before you go live, consider how you’re going to sustain the momentum during those weeks and continue to drive traffic to your Facebook page. This includes all the ways you connect with your target audience online and offline including your email list, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Google+ circles and even in person.

3. Promote your offer across all of your communications channels

There’s no single method for promoting your campaign that guarantees results, so you’ll want to reach your audience where they’re most active and likely to engage—and in today’s world, that’s everywhere (look at all the options in #2 alone!). This can be in your email newsletters, other social media channels, your blog, or even in-person at an upcoming tradeshow. While the core of the offer will remain the same, don’t forget that the way you communicate needs to reflect the medium you’re using. For example, the 140 characters you use on Twitter are going to be different than your Facebook status update. When you tailor your messages, customers are more likely to respond, especially when they realize there’s an actual human behind it as opposed to an automated message feed.

4. Encourage fans to keep in touch

Getting fans to maintain contact after a campaign has ended is what sets great marketers apart from everyone else.  While you have their attention during a campaign, ask fans to join your email list or follow you on Twitter, for example, so you can keep in touch, keep a two-way conversation going, and begin building a long-term relationship.

5. Repeat successful results, not campaigns

You won’t want to do the same thing every time, but you will want to keep engaging your audience and encouraging them to share. You can do this by presenting new offers every month. These could be special deals for fans or exclusive content, for example. By mixing it up each time, you’ll increase responses while making campaigns more engaging.

The #1 value to shoppers in reading social sharing is that it “helps them discover a product they might want to buy”.

2. Social Sharing causes consumers to act

75% of shoppers who read social sharing comments have clicked on the product link in their friends’ Facebook posts, taking them to the product page on a retailer’s website.   53% of the shoppers who have clicked through to the retailer’s site have made a purchase.

A core reason for these actions is that shoppers see social sharing as one of the most helpful tools for finding the right product to buy.

3. Once consumers are exposed to positive social sharing experiences, it creates a virtuous cycle of social sharing and purchase

81% of consumers who purchase products they learn about through social sharing are valuable social sharers themselves, thus creating a cycle of sharing and buying.

4. “Social Proofing” – showing friends activities on a website – significantly increases shopper confidence in buying on that website

32% of visitors are more likely to stay and shop on a site that shows activities of shoppers who have purchased there, even when those shoppers are not their friends.  When the shared activities include the shopping behavior of the visitor’s friends, that number nearly doubles to 62%.

With respect to purchase, 57% of shoppers are more likely to purchase on a site that shows their friends who have purchased on that site.

5. A key to maximizing the traffic and sales from social sharing is to match the motivations of sharers to share with the motivations of shoppers to act

When comparing sharer and shopper motivations, a key takeaway from our study is to encourage sharers to include the reasons they bought the product, as this is the strongest motivator for shoppers to act.

Think of Pinterest as a hybrid between a photo-sharing service like Flickr and a social bookmarking service like delicious: on Pinterest, you “pin” images the way you bookmark URLs with Delicious. You can curate these images into thematic “pinboards” and follow other people’s pinboards to find inspiration or images you want to “repin.”

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Shopping: Both compulsive shoppers and anti-shoppers who aim to get in and out of stores fast like and use Pinterest. I’m in the former camp. I created a Pinboard for my quest for the perfect grey boots, and used it to poll my friends on the best option; I’ve now got Pinboards going for Lego storage options and the perfect computer case. While Pinterest makes shopping even more fun for enthusiasts like me, Chris Tackett of The Atlantic points out that it can also reduce their actual volume of purchases by providing form of virtual acquisition that displaces a certain amount of consumption. Sometimes, just looking at all those pretty grey boots is enough.

What it means for your business: Target Pinterest users’ experience of shopping as a creative process, not just a potential transaction, by making your online presence as pleasurable as it is functional. Product photography matters more than ever……

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Bonding: Pinterest nudges online shopping into something more like the real thing: a social experience shared by friends…..

What it means for your business: Busting in on a circle of Pinterest pals to hawk your wares is not unlike sticking your head into the dressing room where two girlfriends are discussing whether that dress makes her butt look good. Better to send your pro-bonding signals from afar….

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Collaboration: It’s not all about shopping, though. I’ve also found Pinterest to be a powerful collaboration tool for both work and home. At work, I’ve used it build a shared file of visual inspiration for an ebook design project. At home, we used it to help find a fence that also appealed to our neighbours. …..

What it means for your business: Recognize that a single pinboard may reflect the tastes or interests of several contributors.

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Inspiration: Many pinboards are highly personal, eclectic or quirky collections of images that users find exciting or inspiring…..

What it means for your business: Engagement and branding! Create inspirational custom graphics for your blog posts or website that will appeal to your customers or clients. …