Facebook Accounted For 75% Of Social Ad Spending Globally In 2014

The global social advertising market grew 41% to $15.3 billion in 2014; Facebook is maintaining dominance despite lack of presence in the giant China market.

Martin Beck on April 2, 2015 at 1:08 pm

Facebook’s status as king of the social hill shows no signs of slippage. In 2014, the social network pulled in 75% of total advertising spending on social networks, according to a new report by Boston-based Strategy Analytics.

Facebook accounted for $11.4 billion of the $15.3 billion market for social media advertising, a market that grew 41% in 2014, according to the report. Twitter, which earned $1.2 billion in ad revenue in 2014, had 8% of the share. The report predicts that the total social ad market will hit $19.8 billion by the end of this year and $24.2 billion by the end of 2016.

The report also noted that users of social networks passed the 2 billion mark for the first time in 2014. Facebook, with 1.4 billion monthly active users, accounts for 68% of that total despite lacking an official presence in China, which is home to nearly 25% of global social network users.

“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,” the report’s author Leika Kawasaki said in a release. “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.”

Other interesting takeaways from the report:

• Nearly half (46%) of social network users reside in the Asia Pacific region.
• North America had the highest ratio of social network users to its population (64%) in 2014, followed by Western Europe at 55%.
• The US accounts for the largest share of global social network ad spend (41%), totaling $6.2 billion in 2014, up 35% YoY.
• The UK is the second largest market for social network ad spend, accounting for 8.2% of global social network ad spend in 2014, just edging out China (8%).
• The US had the highest social network ad spend per social network user at $31.37 in 2014. This is expected to grow 27% to $39.84 in 2015.
• In 2015 social network users will grow to 2.2 billion, or 31% of the world’s population.
• By year-end 2019 the report predicts  social network users to reach 2.72 billion and account for 36% of the population.

Postscript: Strategy Analytics tells us there was a typo in the news release, so we have edited this post to show corrected estimates for the total social ad market in 2015 and 2016. The original post said the market would grow to $24.2 billion by the end of this year, instead of the end of 2016.