Facebook ad spend rockets 62 per cent despite Cambridge Analytica controversy
Ad spending on Facebook has continued to grow year-on-year despite the difficulties faced by the company and its owner, Mark Zuckerberg.
Data released by technology company 4C revealed that ad spend is rocketing across all the major social media platforms.
Facebook saw overall ad spend on its site go up by 62 per cent, creeping up by seven per cent the week of March 17 when the news broke, and 15 per cent the week after.
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Snapchat ad revenue also saw a huge year-on-year growth of 234 per cent, while Instagram made gains of 136 per cent.
Analysts chalked Snapchat’s success down to the debut of its discover page back in November 2017, which featured more sponsored content and celebrity stories.
The report also stated that sporting events the Six Nations and Winter Olympics contributed to an overall ad spend increase of 65 per cent year-on-year.
4C analysed $250m worth of ad spend from a sample of more than 1,000 individual brands using its software platform to come up with its findings.
Aaron Goldman, CMO at 4C Insights, stated:
We’re seeing continued strength for Facebook advertising despite the negative headlines. For some time now, marketers in the UK have been actively preparing for GDPR so they are comfortable dealing with issues pertaining to data collection.
4C’s research also found that with consumers increasingly consuming media through two or even three screens, brands were responding by adopting “audience first strategies.”
Consumer products powered ad spend across Snapchat and Twitter, as brands in the sector increased their quarterly spend by 78 per cent and 31 per cent across both those platforms respectively.
“Gen-Zers are expected to account for about 40 per cent of all consumers by 2020,” Carlee Benson, media strategy manager at Mbuy explained in the report. “Trends like ephemeral marketing, influencer, and short-form video are favourites amongst this generation and need to be considered with a social media strategy.”