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.

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.

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

On today's episode, we discuss Twitter's major initiatives and figure out what the platform will look like after it reinvents itself. We then talk about Facebook's cost-per-thousand (CPM) recovery, TikTok's ecommerce efforts, and a recent study about COVID-19 news on Facebook. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Jasmine Enberg.

On today's episode, we discuss Pinterest's unique advertising challenges, how its user growth compares with the other digital advertising giants, and the balance between shopping and buying on the platform. We then talk about what is most important to customers using curbside pickup, how Target capped off an exceptional 2020, and how to fairly measure in-store retail's performance going forward as stores reopen with limited capacity. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer analyst at Insider Intelligence Daniel Keyes.

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.

The pandemic has caused the US automotive industry to reduce its digital ad spending by 18.2% in 2020. As car sales plummeted, dealerships closed, and manufacturing slowed, marketers backed off from performance initiatives and focused on branding efforts.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed UK ad spending into negative territory in 2020. However, digital ad spend will grow marginally, by 0.3%, fueled by the impressive performance of video ad spending—up 15.0% this year.

UK’s digital media and technology landscape is facing changes and challenges in 2020—including privacy, Brexit and more—which will impact UK digital marketers.

Programmatic advertising will account for 83.5% of all US digital display ad dollars, or $57.30 billion, this year. Growth in social, connected TV and over-the-top (OTT) advertising will drive programmatic display to almost $80 billion by 2021.

Automated tools and technologies now power the vast majority of social advertising. They power direct transactions and guarantees that use automation to enhance audience targeting. They grant buyers access to premium video and in-app inventory. They make it possible to secure quality inventory and audiences from the walled gardens. Programmatic is, in a word, powerful.

The lion’s share of programmatic trading is made up of programmatic direct deals, and that’s because social media ad trades are almost exclusively direct. As more display ad spending transitions to social, this dominance will continue. And this trend is accentuated in the mobile space, where social is even more dominant. Programmatic video advertising is catching up with the wider market.

Momentum behind mobile, video and social advertising will fuel the automation of ad dollars, as will continued interest in shifting dollars from the open markets to private setups.

eMarketer Analyst Insight: Facebook's share of digital ad revenues far exceeds its share of digital media time. With average ad revenues per user growing as absolute time spent with Facebook in the US stagnates, the gap is expanding, leading to higher costs to grab the average user's attention.