LONDON (ShareCast) - (ShareCast News) - More money will go into social media advertising than on the entire TV ad market in two years according to a new forecasts.


By 2020, social ad spending will account for 29.7% of UK spend whereas TV ad spending will take 17.8%, eMarketer has predicted.

Facebook, which is the most important social network regarding advertising will make approximately £3.8bn in the UK, over £1bn more than in 2018.

The eMarketer report also predicted that the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal involving the scraping of data on 50m users will not damage the Facebook ad market, with the social network accounting for most of the money spent on social networks. Mark Zuckerberg's company takes almost a quarter of the total budget spent on digital advertising.

Facebook is, however, facing a backlash that could have some commercial impact on the platform, with P&G and Unilever recently criticising the social network for being swamped in fake news, racism, sexism and extremism. Both companies, which spend billions on advertising, have threatening to boycott the platform.

Even if Facebook's main platform endures a wobble, other growing social media apps are attracting millions of young users and could be exploited further by advertisers in the future. Instagram or Snapchat, for example, have become very important to target young audiences.

"While Facebook has been losing teen users, Snapchat has been adding them," said Bill Fisher, eMarketer's UK senior analyst. "The result is a growing social media market, and one that advertisers are keen to utilize. Media-rich targeting options, with video a particularly big play, make platforms like Snapchat and Instagram especially attractive."

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