When it comes to selling ads, Facebook is on fire and Twitter is fizzling.
That’s according to the latest projections from digital analytics firm eMarketer, which Wednesday adjusted its 2015 social ad spend forecast upward. Advertisers are spending more to reach people on social networks, Facebook in particular, than originally anticipated. Globally, advertisers will spend $25.14 billion this year on social network ads, which is up from the firm’s previous forecast of $23.68 billion.
You can thank Facebook — and not Twitter — for the sector’s overall positive momentum.
The larger social network, now with nearly 1.5 billion monthly users, is on track to rake in $16.29 billion in ad revenue this year, a surge of around 43 percent over 2014 that gives Facebook roughly 65 percent of the market.
Facebook is benefiting from the success of its sister social network, Instagram, which the company purchased in 2012 for around $1 billion. Instagram just surpassed 400 million monthly users and has been ramping up on its advertising efforts in recent months. The photo-centric network is slated to pull in $600 million in advertising revenue by year’s end, according to eMarketer.
Twitter’s advertising business, meanwhile, isn’t performing as strongly as expected, in part because of the company’s struggles to grow its audience. Twitter, which trails Instagram with 316 million monthly users, is expected to earn $2.03 billion from ads this year. Though the sum is 62 percent greater than last year, it’s less than eMarketer’s prior forecast of 67 percent growth.
“Advertisers want to reach a mass audience … and Twitter hasn’t grown as quickly as other networks,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst. “The challenge with Twitter is that, while it has worked hard to improve advertising, … advertisers are still not sure that Twitter is effective for them.”
Advertisers increasing interest in video is at play here, Williamson said. They’re not confident Twitter users will take the time to stop and watch videos, she said, while the sheer size of Facebook and its robust options for reaching specific audiences make that network an easier bet for video ads.
Facebook, for its part, is helping to push video adoption by featuring the content type more prominently in News Feed, where videos also play automatically. In addition, the company, which counts 4 billion video views per day, announced Wednesday that its network now supports 360-degree videos, starting with videos from entertainment entities such as Star Wars, Discovery and GoPro.
