About 36% of UK businesses use Facebook to attract new customers according to data from Basekit, a website template service company. This hugely concerns local business directories such as Yellow Pages. Econsultancy writes that the web advertising is now as common as print advertising for business marketing (20% vs. 21%).

Both Facebook and Twitter are working hard to attract more small and medium businesses into their ad platforms. Facebook has been intent on pulling in new small and medium business advertising customers using give-away incentives–equally 4.2 million euros in Europe. As more user data helps to target and segment ads, the social networks will be more of a challenge to compete against for business network websites and directories.

According to Kantar Media, US PPC advertising was 6.4% lower in Q4 2011 than one year prior.  The drop in online advertising may be attributed in a large part to a drop in spending among financial, insurance and local service advertisers in the US, the report says.

Display advertising also decreased by an amount of 5.9% in Q4 as well. This drop can be attributed to a decrease in spending with automotive companies, telecom providers and travel companies.

As a whole, paid search declined 2.8% but display increased 5.5% in 2011.

Twitter has been supported by hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, which has allowed it to refine it’s revenue generation tactics without becoming heavy handed and harming user-experience. The company has just launched a new self-service advertising portal that allows businesses with a monthly budget of $5000 and up to launch promoted communications.

The service allows companies to create advertising campaigns using three types of innovative ads:

• Promoted Tweets
• Promoted Trends
• Promoted Accounts

This new tool is still a test run for the company, but it certainly represents a shift to a more self-sustaining approach for the micro-blogging website and service. Twitter will most likely have to rely primarily on advertising for all self-sustaining revenue, and this self-service portal expands it’s potential pool of advertisers.