Snapchat will have 293.0 million users in 2019, up 14.3% on the previous year and outpacing the growth rates of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Growth has returned to core developed markets, while the pace of growth in developing markets is significant.

In 2019, the number of social network users worldwide will grow by 5.9% and approach 3 billion. By 2023, almost 80% of the online population will visit social networks at least monthly.

Twitter’s plateauing user growth has been evident for the past few years. But its user base is stable and ticking upward. We expect it to maintain its substantial influence worldwide as a platform for political discourse and real-time events coverage.

For this update, we look at Instagram's test to remove likes, the launch of Facebook Pay, Twitter's new feature that allows users to hide replies and Snapchat's new longer video ad format, as well as an update on political advertising. It also includes a preview of our latest social network user forecast, which will be discussed in detail in our upcoming social network users report collection, publishing on December 12.

Facebook users in France and Germany are leaving the platform even faster than expected. For the second forecast in a row, we have downgraded Facebook user growth in both countries, as younger users shift to other platforms. In France this year, Facebook will experience a decline in users for the first time, whereas Germany experienced its first drop in users in 2018.

eMarketer principal analyst Nicole Perrin and vice president of content studio Paul Verna face off on the topic of social media and how much it is to blame for our increasingly divided society. Then junior analyst Blake Droesch discusses social video content, how to reach young people in the morning and a new partnership between Verizon and Snapchat.

In this year’s Key Digital Trends report, we identify what changes are coming to the digital media and technology landscape in 2020 and why they matter to marketers.

eMarketer global director of public relations Douglas Clark examines our usage figures for mobile messaging app Line and its prevalence in Asia-Pacific.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson and junior analyst Blake Droesch discuss TikTok's US image, whether competitors can copy it out of business and how in-app buying will affect the platform. Then they talk about the ANA Influencer Marketing Conference, why Facebook is introducing Stories to its dating service and whether Americans will miss seeing Instagram likes when they go away.

Programmatic transactions for digital display account for 86.4% of the market in Canada this year, even though global privacy reform and device tracking protections are making it more challenging to execute.

This report collection explores programmatic digital display ad spending through 2021 across Canada, China, France, Germany, the UK and the US. Reports include breakdowns by device, transaction type and more, and explore the factors driving investment.

Following a redesign in early 2018 that prompted some US users to leave the platform and stifled growth elsewhere, Snapchat is making a comeback. New features and a rebuilt Android platform are giving the social network new momentum. In its latest forecast on worldwide social network users, eMarketer has upgraded its estimates for Snapchat users for 2019 through 2023.

Instagram has begun hiding ‘likes’ for select users worldwide, expanding a test that could determine whether or not they will be permanently hidden from public view.

Since Instagram rolled out its Checkout feature earlier this year, brands have begun linking influencer content to shopping tools as a way to drive—and measure—direct sales. Should the platform hide likes from public view, which it began testing in the US this week, influencer marketers could be forced to look beyond vanity metrics to more advanced measurement tools, including social commerce and in-store purchase behavior.

We look at how digital tools like smartphones and social media fit into (or distort) the lives of teens, who are the core of Gen Z.

eMarketer junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam discusses the impact of stories on our ad revenue estimates for Snapchat and Instagram.

This is the first installment in an ongoing series of monthly updates on the major social media platforms. The goal of each update is to provide a summary of key developments and what they mean for marketers.

Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat through a congressional hearing over the company’s Libra cryptocurrency efforts, Instagram launched a standalone messaging app for users, and Twitter banned political advertising on its platform—and that was just a tiny portion of what made the news.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco shares our latest ad spend estimates for Instagram and the platform’s focus on opening new ad inventory.

TikTok, the Chinese short-video app, is taking off in the US, India and elsewhere. It offers many unique marketing opportunities, such as the Hashtag Challenge, but marketers should take note of some risks.