Commentary
Facebook Commands 60% Of Ad Budgets; Mobile Boasts 95% Ad View Rate
- by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 18, 2019
While Instagram now has greater social cachet, Facebook's flagship behemoth still sucks up most of marketers’ ad budgets.
Indeed, more than 60% of all ad spend is still allocated to Facebook’s News Feed rather than being spread across Instagram Feed, Stories, Suggested Video, and Instream Video placements.
That’s according to a new report from Socialbakers, analyzing more than 140,000 brand profiles.
That’s not to take anything away from Instagram and its influence in the broader social ecosystem.
The top 50 brands on Instagram now have the same audience size as the top 50 brands on Facebook, according to the report.
Speaking of influence, the analysis found that influencer marketing shows no sign of slowing down.
Among more than 3 million influencer profiles analyzed, the number of Instagram influencers affiliated with brands who made posts using #Ad -- to denote sponsorship -- has increased 33% over the past year.
As for other marketing approaches, Socialbakers found that about 30% of paid ad spend is going toward low-quality and under-performing content.
Less surprisingly, mobile is only strengthening its position as the key platform for marketers.
Among other reasons for mobile’s growing monopoly on advertising, Socialbakers found that ads are seen on mobile devices a staggering 95.1% of the time, but viewed only 4.9% of the time on desktop.
Gavin O'Malley edits MediaPost's Mobile Marketing Daily and MoBlog column. Follow him: @mp_gavin. You can reach Gavin at gavin@mediapost.com.
Gavin, the findings in your last sentence are really hard to swallow. Does anyone really believe that smartphone users "see" 95% of the ads while desktop users "see" only 5% of the ads? For starters, what percent of the time is nobody attending the device---even when it is on? And, beyond that, how do we know that when an ad is on-screen for at least a couple of seconds---I assume that this was the "exposure" benchmark---that the ad was "seen", let alone "viewed" with any degree of attentiveness?
Gavin, I have to question some of the data you received. First I agree with Ed on mobile and desktop. Desktop, laptops and pads are far stronger than the 5 percent you rate them. I would place them in the 30 to 40 percent based on what we see.
Second, Facebook is far weaker in delivering advertising response than what they say. Some of their number apprear to be worldwide where mobile will be much higher. Advertisers just want to production from the North American market. I know for a fact that my company easily out performs FB in the US sweepstakes market. How do I know? Results given directly from the advertisers.
It wouldn't have anything to do with off-platform video having a 0-second viewing threshold would it? In pratical terms it means that, for example, if you are swiping through your Facebook and there is a linked video ... yep, you saw it.