Seems like the revenue juggernaut of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) won’t be decelerating any sooner, despite the patched scandal-coat it adorns every time! With the recent forecast by eMarketer, digital video advertising in the US is quite above the mark of silver lining and is most likely to shine for a while now. And guess what? Facebook dominates the US digital ad market with a quarter share!
In 2018, Facebook, in close collaboration with its acquisition Instagram, will scrape up about $6.81 billion of the video ad spending in the US which will make them a claimant of one-fourth of digital video-ad spending in the United States this year. This latest forecast underlines the fact that video will soar about 30% to a figure of $27.82 billion, comprising a quarter share of the whole estimated U.S. video-ad spending in 2018.
Facebook Captures Sweet Slice of Online Video In US
According to eMarketer’s forecast, Facebook positions itself firmly in place as the No. 1 social-video ad platform in the U.S. With almost 87% of U.S. social video ad spending raked up in its safe, Facebook will keep dominating for a while now. In consonance with the team of eMarketer who claim that Facebook and Instagram have been successful with their in-feed video format, we can also expect a double-digit growth in the video ad revenue through 2020.
The In-feed video has clearly bolstered the ad-spend figure this time since all the video revenue comes from those feeds. Additionally, the newer in-stream formats for Facebook Watch is comparatively smaller but still continues to capture user attention. Again, these in-feed video ads come quite handy for creating brand awareness as an additional perk.
Where The Other Social Titans At?
According to the report, YouTube represents 11% of the net US ad revenue of its parent company Google and generates about 73% of ad revenue from online video in the US.
eMarketer also forecasts that YouTube will generate an estimated ad revenue accounting to $3.36 billion in 2018. This will be an upsurge by 17.1% compared to the year 2017. However, one underlying reason to not put this Google-owned video sharing platform on a comparative scale with other platforms like Instagram or Snapchat is that the traffic acquisition measure, as well as the content costs, amount to rake up more than half of its gross revenue. This, obviously, is much higher than other platforms and shouldn’t be compared with the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.
Talking of Snapchat’s US video revenue, this year it will soar up by almost 19% from last year to hit the mark of $397 million in 2018. This year, the share of social video spending for Snapchat will be 5.1% and will witness a slight growth through the year 2020.
Another social platform, Twitter‘s ad revenues will continue to grow to nearly $633 million in 2018, which will be 55% major slice of the total US ad revenues from the video. However, with one silver lining to rely upon, as of now, 8.1% share of the US social video ad spending, and a 2.3% share of total video spending – Twitter may go through a pitfall of its share!
Facebook Towers Over Youtube – How?
“Increasingly, the type of advertising [businesses] have done on TV is more available to them on streaming and social platforms,” Paul Verna, a principal analyst, EMarketer
Although one may consider the reason of Youtube’s tardy growth to be the difference of gross revenues generated, one thing that remains true is Facebook has also been quite keen at shrugging off its scandals and restoring its lost reputation in one or the other way!
The growth is no over-night miracle story, but heavy investments by Facebook in order to properly expand its video offering. This is evident with the launch of several scripted series, for instance, “Sorry for your Loss” which received recognition and critical acclaims tantamount to those of TV shows.
On a manifesting note, with Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter sharing slices of the huge cake, dubbed as “ad spending”, what remains intact is that those very digital platforms are moonwalking their way in as part of the new TV!
