Social network ad spending has substantially rebounded since the early days of the pandemic. In 2021, the biggest issues social media marketers will face are in the areas of brand safety, ethics, and privacy.

Social commerce accelerated in the US in 2020 amid the pandemic-driven ecommerce boom as key platforms advanced their shopping and checkout capabilities.

The pandemic has brought an influx of new users for subscription OTT, live videos, and video games in 2020, but other activities such as social networking, mobile messaging, and digital video haven’t seen the same bump.

Facebook has come under repeated fire for allowing political ads, for the most part without fact-checking, but the wave of misinformation around the US presidential election forced the platform to temporarily change its tune. In September, Facebook announced that it would prohibit new political ads in the week before the US presidential election on November 3.

From the growth of TikTok and of social commerce to the challenges of brand safety and the cookieless future, 2021 will be another year of big stories for social media.

The mid-roll ads operate differently from pre-roll ads in order to ensure the livestreams are not interrupted. On Twitch, mid-roll ads run when a streamer triggers an ad break on their channel. YouTube also allows creators to manually insert mid-roll ads during their streams. On Facebook Live, the livestream continues while the mid-roll ad plays in a small floating window.

We think TikTok will not end up being banned in the US. But even if we’re wrong, there are enough other venues for user-generated short videos that marketers now need to make this format a priority. Get comfortable with the ad opportunities. Ads on apps like TikTok are different from what marketers are used to on Facebook or Instagram.

Despite how consumers feel about it, politics remains a core part of the social media experience. This report explores how marketers should navigate social in the aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election.

Attributing revenues to marketing touchpoints is one of marketers’ most challenging yet vital tasks. Read on to learn how marketers are approaching the journey to holistic attribution.

This report explores the latest developments in the social media landscape, including a look at TikTok Global, Instagram’s launch of Reels, and new election-related moves from Facebook and Twitter.

The coronavirus pandemic and changes set to be implemented in the forthcoming iOS 14 are the latest shocks to an evolving app economy. This report will look at how these changes have altered developer monetization strategies and advertiser options.

In July, for example, comparison website WhistleOut analyzed more than 8,750 social media posts on 175 personal and professional feeds, finding that ads made up an average of just 2.4% of posts on TikTok feeds, compared with 21.2% for Facebook and 20.6% for Instagram. Meanwhile, 14.2% of Twitter posts were ads. Many of the paid advertising options on TikTok also incorporate creators.

Esports received heightened media attention during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. While the publicity helped bring awareness to the growing industry, the pandemic will not have a significant impact on annual esports viewership or advertising revenues in the US.

“Originally, our podcast ads drove a specific call to action to a certain URL,” said Will Bradley, growth lead at PolicyMe. “We've shifted our mentality to more reach and brand awareness. People will convert ultimately through a Facebook or Google ad, as an example. But they would have originally heard about us through a podcast.”.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic, we have revised our US mobile ad spending forecast. This report puts the new numbers in context.

The fact that social listening tools can’t access nonpublic conversations inside of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and others is a huge gap and has been for several years.

This report explores the latest developments in the social media landscape, including the Facebook ad boycott and new monetization opportunities from the platforms, as well as our latest forecast for social network ad revenues.

The coronavirus pandemic is putting a major dent in US digital ad spending growth. Outlays will increase by just 1.7% this year—read on to learn what that means for major ad channels and platforms.

Social media advertising will remain vulnerable in Q2 and possibly longer. CPMs will stay low, spending cuts will persist, and ad creative will be tricky to get right.

Well into the pandemic, consumers still say they are spending more time with social media. Activities like live streaming, video chatting and gaming are drawing some of them in.

During Comcast’s Q2 2019 earnings call, the company reported that $1 billion of the ad revenues NBCUniversal secured during the Upfronts came from digitally native businesses like the FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) companies, as well as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. The trade group Vab estimated that US D2C TV ad spending increased 60% in 2018 to $3.77 billion.

Social media stories are growing in importance for consumers and marketers. Here’s how businesses can make the most of stories for organic marketing, influencer marketing and paid advertising.

While the coronavirus pandemic has yet to reach its apex, it’s clear that mobile ad spend will fall significantly in the short-term, not rise as we expected in our most recent estimates.

As with every other aspect of our lives, COVID-19 is impacting social media usage and advertising. Some of those changes, along with other important ad product launches, will continue to affect advertisers once the pandemic ends.

ViacomCBS announced that its streaming services CBS All Access and Showtime have a combined 10 million US subscribers. It earned $1.6 billion in US streaming video revenues last year. The company also announced that it will expand CBS All Access to include more content from Viacom entertainment properties. Facebook canceled two scripted series for its Facebook Watch product.