Marketers in the UK are expected to invest £3.3bn on social media advertising in 2018, a 24% increase over 2017 research has revealed.
Findings from eMarketer said diversification in the marketplace, which is driving up entire social network user rates and resulting in increased investment, has led to increase its projections for social networking advertising spend by about 5% points since the earlier forecast.
The company forecasts that by 2020, social media will overtake TV ad spend as it will account for a fifth of all media ad spend, while broadcast TV will have a 17.8% share of the market.
eMarketer UK senior analyst Bill Fisher said while Facebook has been losing teen users, Snapchat has been adding them.
“The result is a growing social media market, and one that advertisers are keen to utilize. Media-rich targeting options, with video a particularly big play, make platforms like Snapchat and Instagram especially attractive,” Fisher said.
eMarketer expects that social media’s share of the digital market will continue to increase and hit 29.7% in 2020. Additionally, the company estimates Facebook will have a 21.3% share of digital spend in 2018 and reach almost a quarter (24.6%) of the value by 2020.
On the other hand Twitter is expected to experience a slight down fall this year, to 1.2% of the market. Snapchat will have 0.8% of the digital spend market, with the number expected to increase to 2% by 2020. Picture focused site Instagram is predicted to have 4.9% of the digital ad market by the end of this year, which is expected to increase to nearly 8% by 2020.
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Earlier this year, eMarketer’s report on UK digital users revealed that Facebook is losing friends among teens and young adults.
eMarketer’s estimates for Facebook usage among 18 to 24 year-olds were reduced by more than five percentage points. In 2018, 83% of social network users aged 18 to 24 will be Facebook users. However, this share is forecasted to drop to 81.5% by 2021.
