Facebook Takes a Quarter of All U.S. Video Ad Spending: eMarketer

Facebook didn't even offer video a few years back, and now it's the biggest player in the online video ad space. Facebook takes nearly a quarter of all video ad spending.

The entire digital video advertising ecosystem has seen huge growth in 2018, and will increase by almost 30 percent, growing to a total of $27.8 billion this year. According to research company eMarketer, video will make up 25 percent of all digital ad spending in the U.S. this year.

Diving into the numbers, eMarketer finds that Facebook (including Instagram) will take 24.5 percent of the total video ad budget, and is the country's largest video ad platform, earning $6.8 billion from video this year. What's more, Facebook takes 87 percent of all U.S. video ad spending on social networks. Look for this success to continue with double-digit growth through 2020.

Facebook and Instagram are succeeding with in-feed video ads, notes eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. These are video ads that appear between items in a news or social feed. She predicts the company will find success with in-stream video ads in Facebook Watch, which appear in the video player and feel like traditional TV commercials.

Surprisingly, YouTube is well behind Facebook in video ad dollars, taking in $3.4 billion in the U.S. this year. It's still seeing strong growth, as that number is up 17.1 percent from 2017. This year, 12.1 percent of all U.S. video ad spending is going to YouTube, a percentage that will decline slightly over the coming years. Video ads provide 73 percent of YouTube's revenue in the U.S., and kick in 11 percent of Google's net U.S. ad revenues.

Twitter will take in $633 million from video ads in 2018, while Snapchat will earn $397 million. Both companies show double-digit gains.

eMarketer gets its numbers from an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from research firms, government agencies, public companies, and media firms.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net