Global ad expenditure in social media is set to grow by 72% between this year and 2019, from $29 billion to $50 billion, according to Zenith’s new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts.

By 2019, social media will account for 20% of all internet advertising, up from 16% in 2016. It is growing by 20% a year and will be almost neck-and-neck with newspaper advertisting in 2019, overtaking it comfortably the following year.

Meanwhile, online video advertising is growing almost as quickly as social media, at 18% a year, and by 2019 will total $35.4 billion across the world, fractionally ahead of the amount spent on radio advertising ($35 billion).

Like social media, it is benefiting from the spread of mobile devices, as well as the development of high-speed mobile data connections and improvements in handset displays. It is becoming common for brands to use online video as a complement to TV, but for most it does not make sense to use it as a substitute. Even by 2019, online video advertising will be less than a fifth (18%) of the size of TV advertising.

Zenith forecasts that global ad expenditure to grow by 4.4% in 2017, the same rate as for this year. It will then grow by 4.4% in 2018 and 4.1% in 2019.
Within Europe, it forecasts 8% growth in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus this year, followed by 9% growth in 2017. These markets will contribute 2% of global ad spend growth between 2016 and 2019.

Commenting on the figures, Jonathan Barnard, head of forecasting at Zenith, said: “Social media and online video are driving continued growth in global ad spend, despite political threats to the economy.

“Just four markets in Asia will provide more than a third of global ad growth to 2019, counterbalancing recession in Latin America and the Middle East.”