The digital ad spending in the US is expected to rise 16 percent this year to $83b according to The Wall Street Journal. But not surprising is the fact that Google and Facebook are going to be main winners/drivers while Twitter is expected to lose some ground. Last year, Facebook’s share of the total digital ads space stood at 12 percent while its main rival Google controlled 31 percent of the market.
That said, Facebook is expected to be the biggest jumper in the digital ads space this year according to the report as it is expected to see a 32 percent rise in 2017. This means Facebook is set to further eat into Google’s digital ads dominance in the US and in fact the world this year and in numbers, Google’s share of the market will shrink to 40.7 percent while Facebook is expected to hit 19.7 percent. Facebook’s growth is driven by its other services like Instagram which the report says will account for 20% of Facebook’s U.S. mobile revenue this year, up from 15% last year and this comes as another Facebook product WhatsApp says it is now testing a way to rake in revenue by allowing businesses message customers directly.
Twitter’s digital ad revenue is expected to fall 4.7 percent this year while Snapchat may boost its ad revenue by 158% to $770 million in the U.S. this year and reach $2.2 billion in 2019.
Ads revenue made up nearly 84 percent of Facebook’s revenue last year thereby buttressing arguments in some quarters that Facebook and Google are more of media companies but that largely overlooks core tech services by both internet giants.
Facebook has what it takes to continue to eat into Google’s share in the US largely because of the success of its other platforms such as Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp which have near 2.5 billion users combined.
