Dive Brief:

• 500 retailers in Internet Retailer magazine’s 2014 “Social Media 500” had some $2.69 billion in sales in 2013 that came from social media clicks.

• That’s up 62.5% from 2013, and the estimate could be low, the magazine said, because only direct clicks were counted.

• There’s been a boost from the social media sites themselves, which are increasingly making it easier for retailers to drive shoppers from their sites to buy. 

Dive Insight:

Everyone’s wondered how Facebook, Twitter, and other media sites will ever make enough money to please their investors. Well, by making their sites more valuable to retailers, they have a better chance of selling ads. So far, so good. Retailers have also learned how to best leverage social media, looking at it as an opportunity to interact with customers and not simply amass followers. The question in the long term is how tolerant users will be of the invasion of advertising onto their pages and feeds; they can be touchy if the balance tips too much toward commerce. For now, it’s clearly becoming an important way to drive people to buy things.