Social Advertising grew at a tremendous pace in 2014. It brought in about $15.3 billion in total ad spend, up 41% year over year. This trend is expected to continue through 2015 and beyond, which brings with it great opportunities for advertisers and marketers. When it comes to social ad spend though, Facebook is the dominate name in the industry.
Last year the social network brought in a full 75% of all social ad spend according to a recent report from Strategy Analytics. That translates to $11.4 Billion of the total $15.3. This is, of course, partly because Facebook was the first major company to get into social advertising, and that they are by far the biggest social network. The big question, however, is whether they will be able to maintain such a dominant presents in this vertical while other companies are entering the fray.
Twitter, for example, took in $1.2 billion in social ad revenue, but have only been even offering ads in any significant way for a short time. They have also been making some big changes to the way their ads work, which could give them some nice benefits going forward.
The author of the report, Leika Kawasaki, said in the release, “Overall, the social network market continues to show strong growth across all regions as the major social network platforms drive usage and engagement via improved integration of digital media content. While Facebook currently dominates the global social network market, its absence in China allows local social networks such as QZone and Tencent Weibo to gain traction in the rapidly expanding Chinese digital advertising market.”
This brings up some interesting points. First, Facebook has barely even been able to enter China. This is going to be an issue for them long term if they can’t penetrate the market. Of course, there are many obstacles in their way, but it should be something they are working on. According to the report, as many as 46% of all social network users are from the Asia Pacific region, which means if China won’t use Facebook, it will be hard for Facebook to continue their overall dominance.
While there are certainly some challenges ahead for Facebook, they are set in a good position. The important thing for them now will be to continue to maintain their lead. After all, it is expected that the social media ad spend will go up to $24.2 billion by the end of 2016, which is a major opportunity for any social network.
You can see the press release for the full report HERE.
