Dive Brief:
- According to eMarketer, Facebook will receive 67.9% of all social media advertising dollars spent worldwide this year.
- Facebook was distantly followed in second by Twitter at 7.9%, with all other platforms combined coming in at 24.2%.
- Facebook will take in $22.37 billion in net ad revenue in 2016, up from 2015’s $17.08 billion, eMarketer estimates.
Dive Insight:
These results should come as no surprise to the industry: Facebook was the first social media platform to aggressively push marketers into a pay-for-play advertising model rather than developing a more organic strategy, and Facebook has built very robust internal ad tech to help marketers create effective campaigns for its audience.
“Facebook is seeing momentum across its ad business,” said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “On the branding side, video ads are becoming more and more popular for marketers whose objective is broad awareness. And products like Dynamic Ads, which let advertisers upload their product catalog to Facebook and then deliver relevant targeted ads, are proving highly effective for marketers that want to drive lower-funnel activities, such as purchases.”
Mobile has become an especially effective ad venue for Facebook, accounting for around 80% of its ad revenue. In an online ecosystem struggling with ad blocking, Facebook is keenly aware it needs to provide its users with a good experience, while also giving advertisers a bang for the bucks they spend on the platform.
Case in point: After some testing, it dropped banner ads from one of its ad tech platforms because it determined the format failed on both counts. Instead, Facebook pushed advertisers to buy native and video ad units because they performed better and offered a better user experience.