*Social networks will boost US mobile video ad spending this year.* In-app video advertising on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat was the main driver of growth, with new YouTube and Roku ad inventory helping, too.

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.

“When we probe into some of the motivations behind social advertising across media buys, we often hear about the value of its scale against highly addressable audiences.”.

Smaller businesses forced to reduce their social media ad buys may see reduced results as they turn to free, organic actions instead.

Due to pent-up demand for traditional advertising, as well as exploding growth in ecommerce-related ad spending and social media advertising, we expect a record-setting pace for ad spending growth worldwide this year. Moreover, the trend line for future spending has also shifted up, thanks to the unexpected resilience of digital ad spending in 2020.

That means we consider social media ad buys as transacted almost exclusively via programmatic direct. Social network advertising will account for the lion’s share of our programmatic direct figure, though there is a growing appetite for this transaction method outside the social media sphere.

On today's episode, we discuss what brand new forecasts the forecasting team cooked up in Q2, including social media buyers and buy now, pay later service users. We then talk about the 2021 NBA finals ratings, a landmark ruling that lets brands work with NCAA athletes, and why OOH ad prices are on the rise. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam and director of forecasting at Insider Intelligence Oscar Orozco.

Digital advertising confounded the conditions of the past year or so and will attract more than three-quarters of total media ad spending in 2021—£19.23 billion ($24.66 billion). Video has been the biggest driver of digital spend during this time.

The major social platforms hit the ground running in 2021, making substantial investments into many of today’s top social trends: audio, influencers, and short video, to name a few.

This quarter, we are adding TikTok to our social media update series, which analyzes key developments for marketers from the major social platforms.

US advertisers increased their investments on digital media by almost 15% last year despite a pandemic and recession, looking for flexibility and accountability.

Questions of media quality also weigh heavily on marketers as they think about how much to spend on social media advertising. In the same IAS study, 59% of respondents said concerns about insufficient transparency would affect their expenditures, and the majority said that Facebook would be where they’d most likely adjust spend due to insufficient transparency.

Marketer Takeaway: The trend toward repurposing creator content for paid social media ads has accelerated during the pandemic. The updates allow brands to more seamlessly integrate creators into their social media ad strategy, while ensuring that creators are also compensated for their work.