eMarketer released a whole bunch of reports highlighting key developments and predictions to take place in the digital space by the end of the year. Here’s what you missed.
News #1: Google Sustains Market Leadership in Search Ad Revenue
eMarketer’s report indicated that this year Google would net more than 73% of US search ad revenue, only 1% lower since 2018.
It is forecasted that they will only lose 2 percentage points in search ad revenue share between 2019 and 2021.
While this is unsurprising, considering Google’s dominance and market leadership in search advertising, eMarketer’s forecast showed that Amazon was the only company projected to gain search ad revenue share between 2019 and 2021, putting it in direct competition with Google.
Amazon previously surpassed Microsoft in 2018 and became the second-largest search ad seller in the US market.
Search advertising however, is projected to hold on to just less than 43% share of the total digital market by 2023 as the future of search advertising may include voice and visual search ads.
Source: Search Engine Journal
News #2: How Instagram Shows Posts on Explore Page
In a long and complicated blog post, Instagram’s parent company, Facebook delivers a detailed explanation about the subsidiary’s ‘Explore’ page – how posts appear and its potential to expand your target audience by getting content in front of people who don’t follow you.
While the blog post deep dives into the algorithmic intricacies of the Explore page, the key question on everyone’s minds still remains, ‘’Can I optimise for Instagram’s Explore page?”. The answer is yes, however we still don’t have all the information.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Instagram chooses the content based on user actions on posts such as likes or saves; what we don’t know is the weight Instagram assigns to these actions to determine what content to show on your Explore page. Do they show similar posts to the ones you’ve liked or saved? Or even ‘dm’ed to someone? Here’s how you can get seen on Instagram’s Explore Page.
One thing we do have though, is information on ‘’Seed Accounts’’ or accounts you have previously interacted with. Instagram identifies the accounts you’ve interacted with through your user actions and definitely shows similar content to drive engagement to new accounts.
Source: Search Engine Journal
News #3: Snapchat Usage to Grow More than 14% in 2019
Remember Snapchat? Well, it’s finally making a comeback!
The social network is gaining momentum with its new features and a rebuilt Android platform as outlined in eMarketer’s report that forecasts a user base of 293.01 million by the end of 2019. This is a 14.2% increase since last year!
Guess those gender swap and aging filters really were a game-changer.
Despite Snapchat’s new found momentum, it still faces stiff competition in the digital ad space market from Instagram, which is predicted to from 11.6% to 788.43 million users worldwide. Instagram’s will have a 4.6% share of digital ad spending this year while Snapchat is only predicted to capture 0.5% of worldwide ad spend.
Will make a miraculous recovery in 2020 and overtake Instagram? Unlikely, but one can always hope.
Source: eMarketer
News #4: Paid Social Account for Greater Share of Programmatic Digital Display Ads
In yet another report released by eMarketer, social networks are forecasted to account for a greater share of programmatic digital display ads in 2019 than originally estimated.
Programmatic advertising is the automation in buying, selling or fulfilling digital ads. With regards to digital display ads, programmatic advertising includes digital audio, social video, connected TB and over-the-top advertising. The scope of this therefore is much larger and apparently, has the best impact on social networks.
US advertisers are willing to spend more than $57 billion on programmatic display advertising with more than half of that to be allocated to digital display ads on social networks.
Why the fuss over Social Networks?
Lauren Fisher, principal analyst at eMarketer attributes social networks’ surprising share of programmatic digital display ads to their scale and identity capabilities.
Source: Search Engine Journal
