The social platforms are getting serious about long-form shows. Here’s what’s driving Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter toward this form of video—and what advertisers need to know.

Video monetization is strong across advertising and consumer-supported platforms, signaling overall health in the market. As new digital platforms emerge and existing ones solidify their positions, viewing continues to veer away from linear TV and toward digitally connected screens of all sizes and types.

eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver, Andrew Lipsman and Nicole Perrin discuss lessons that businesses can take from the last recession and the effect it had on ad spending. How will digital hold up? Which channels are advertisers pulling back from? Will the US stimulus package help? They then talk about what consumers will likely spend less on if they lose their jobs, why Twitter will now allow COVID-19 ads and the knock-on effects of moving Amazon Prime Day.

With large sectors of the economy unable to do business as usual, many marketers have paused or changed media plans. In one potential early sign of the tough times to come for digital advertising, Twitter updated its guidance to investors earlier this week and announced that it expects to see a drop in Q1 2020 revenues, on a year-over-year basis, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Industry Voices: Marketing in Uncertain Times with Twitter. Industry Voices: Marketing in Uncertain Times with MercadoLibre Advertising.

Some 13% of respondents named LinkedIn the “most positive,” whereas 11% cited Facebook and just 2% cited Twitter. It’s no surprise that LinkedIn’s focus on professional networking lends itself to a civil tenor of discussion. On Twitter, by contrast, where many profiles are anonymous and many of the topics contentious, hostility can, and often does, prevail.

Industry Voices: Marketing in Uncertain Times with Twitter. Industry Voices: Marketing in Uncertain Times with MercadoLibre Advertising.

For the first time, we have created estimates for social network video ad spending, including Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter. In 2018, the segment will total $7.85 billion in ad spending.

Seventy-two percent of US and UK consumers who follow influencers said they were spending more time on social media since the outbreak.

With that context in mind, the number of visitors to TikTok in Brazil in July—39.8 million by Comscore’s count—is on par with our 2020 monthly user forecast for Twitter (35.4 million). It is also worth noting that this figure is nearly quadruple our estimates for Snapchat (10.1 million), but roughly half of the 82.3 million monthly users we expect for Instagram.

The second half of July means Q2 earnings are out. While some results were surprising, others showed companies’ continued growth, and in one instance, even a potential rebound. We offer our analysis on six companies as well as our own forecasts.

This report provides the key takeaways from our inaugural forecast on worldwide Snapchat users, as well as worldwide user data for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson discusses Twitter's and Snapchat's Q4 2019 performances. She then talks about how much money Instagram supposedly makes Facebook and the seriousness of the big tech antitrust investigations.

This year, 55.2 million people in the US will use Twitter. That's 16.8% of the population and a 0.9% increase from 2017, according to eMarketer estimates.

One in ten internet users is now on content aggregation site reddit. Its continued growth is primarily being fueled by an increasing percentage of people who use the app through mobile, though that figure still lags Facebook’s and Twitter’s, according to latest eMarketer estimates.

Big news means bigger earnings for Twitter—and their Q4 2018 revenues, which beat expectations, proves that the company was able to leverage its real-time conversation appeal to bolster video ad sales during the big news events of the past year.