Today's young people have spoken. The bad news: They don't like banner ads much. The good news: Many think social networking ads are "fun."

According to a survey by Peanut Labs, San Francisco, 51% of Gen Y social networking users (between the ages of 13 and 25 years old) said they either never click on banner ads or only do so once or twice a month.

Not the most welcome news for those marketers desperately trying to reach this hot, yet fickle and ad-savvy demographic. But on the upside, the demo that spends $172 billion a year said they do not dislike ad-vertising on social networks outright. In fact, the survey, which pulled responses from some 4,000 users on May 24 (one year anniversary of Facebook's opening up its platform to third-party application software), showed that 61% of users said they found such applications "fun" and 16% said they found them "useful" in their online activities. What's more, almost half of them said they were using these applications—known colloquially as "widgets"—more frequently than they had six months ago.

"Our survey indicates that Gen Y is truly enjoying social applications," said Murtaza Hussain, CEO of Peanut Labs, in a statement. "With [over 50%] of all respondents surveyed indicating they rarely or never click on[banner] ads within social networks . . . advertisers could benefit from creating engaging widget advertisements in order to reach Gen Y more effectively."