Google and Facebook — the world’s biggest online ad companies — could see their share of U.S. digital advertising decline for the first time, thanks to slowing growth and competition from the likes of Amazon and Snap.
Google’s and Facebook’s share of the U.S. ad market could decline for the first time, thanks to Amazon and Snapchat
But don’t worry. Digital advertising is still a duopoly.
Rani Molla was a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
Google’s share is expected to decline from 38.6 percent last year to 37.2 percent in 2018, according to digital measurement firm eMarketer, while Facebook could shrink slightly from 19.9 to 19.6 percent.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s ad business is expected to grow to nearly 3 percent of the market in that same period from 2 percent last year, for a total of $2.9 billion in ad revenue for 2018. Snap’s share of the ad market is expected to grow from 0.6 percent last year to 1 percent this year. Both Amazon and Snap ad shares are expected to grow through 2020.
Of course, these competitors are still tiny compared with Google and Facebook, whose absolute ad revenue is still growing. Google’s U.S. ad revenue is expected to rise $5 billion this year to $39.9 billion, while Facebook could rise $3 billion this year to $21 billion, according to eMarketer. Total U.S. digital ad sales will rise 19 percent this year to $107 billion.
Globally, Google has been seeing a decline in its ad share since eMarketer began measuring in 2011. Facebook, however, is still seeing ad share growth worldwide, rising to 17.9 percent of the world’s digital ad market in 2018, up from 17.2 percent last year.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
