Social media ad spend to surpass print for the first time

According to Zenith’s data, social media advertising will account for 13% of total global ad spend and rank as the third-largest advertising channel, behind TV and paid search. This is big news, as 2019 will be the first year that social media ad spend outperforms print ad spend.

Zenith attributes the growth across social media ad channels to SMBs shifting and adding budgets in order to take advantage of the targeting and localization capabilities offered by platforms like Facebook. Despite this, social ad spend is expected to level-out over the coming years, reporting social media ad spend growth to slow from 20% this year to 17% in 2020 and 13% in 2021.