US marketers allocated more than $7 billion in digital ad spending to YouTube last year, eMarketer estimates, up 15.1% over 2018 spending levels. That resulted in more than $3.4 billion in net ad revenues for the video-sharing giant, with most of the remainder going to content creators.

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.

Mobile ad spending in the US was up 23.0% last year, we estimate, reaching $87.30 billion. That translated to just under two-thirds of all digital ad spending in the country.

As more people cut the cord, viewers are increasingly tuning in to live digital video services.

eMarketer principal analyst Jillian Ryan analyzes the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on event strategy for B2Bs. She discusses the edge that tech-savvy companies like Google and Adobe have over other sectors looking to pivot to virtual events, and even internal meetings. Watch now.

The wave of coronavirus (COVID-19)-related content has become a high-stakes test for social media platforms’ abilities to fight misinformation. False recommendations about how to avoid contracting the virus or what measures infected people should take to avoid spreading it have the potential to cause more sickness and death from a pandemic that has already taken thousands of lives worldwide.

In-person events are a cornerstone touchpoint for many B2B companies, but as the coronavirus outbreak progresses globally, major business events have been cancelled or postponed. This will come at great cost to marketing budgets and can have a lasting impact on revenue and sales.

We forecast that 37.5 million people in the US will watch streaming video on Twitch at least monthly in 2020, meaning the video streaming platform will reach 15.5% of US digital video viewers this year. At its current pace, Twitch will surpass 40 million US users by the end of 2021, according to our first ever forecast for the platform.

Google and Facebook already control 60.8% of the total US digital ad market. And when it comes to the duopoly's share of digital political ad revenues, it has an even tighter grip, with a combined 77.6% this election cycle.

Amazon, which already holds a dominant position in the US smart speaker market, will continue to maintain this leadership through 2021, with approximately 70% of total US smart speaker users expected to use an Amazon Echo device, according to our latest estimates.

US digital political ad spending will hit a record high for the 2019/2020 political cycle, crossing the $1 billion mark for the first time ($1.34 billion), as a larger number of highly engaged voters are expected to donate to the candidates of their choice in this year’s presidential race.

Connected vehicles are changing how people think about mobility. They also have important implications for marketers, who are experimenting with ways to tap the data they produce to engage consumers and drive new revenues.

The role of political advertising in social media will be a key discussion topic in 2020—an easy prediction to make. Kantar Media expects that US digital political ad spending will reach $1.2 billion this year, and we believe the social platforms that continue accepting political advertisers will be major beneficiaries of that spending.

This report looks at how digital technology fits into the daily lives of US kids—digital natives who, compared with teens and young adults, aren’t really all that digital.

The rise of smartphones has transformed search behavior, with almost two-thirds of the US population expected to search on smartphones this year—a phenomenon that has changed how search results look and allowed users to start searching with their voice or an image.

Historically, most marketers have equated search with general search engines—especially Google. But many of consumers’ most commercially oriented queries are entered directly on retail sites. And for the most part, that means Amazon.

This report provides the key takeaways from our forecast on US sharing economy users, including user data for Uber, Lyft and Airbnb.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch and vice president of content studio Paul Verna talk about a potential Facebook injunction, Hulu binge ads, YouTube's ads of the year, Lyft's new car rental service, Pandora voice ads, Google's top searches of 2019 and more.

The first primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination are not happening until February 2020, but the heat is already on the biggest digital ad sellers to restrict what they allow political and issue-oriented advertisers to do.

As the use of smart-home technology increases, brands are experimenting with ways to use these connected IoT devices and systems—and the massive amounts of data that flows from them—in their marketing activities.