This year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona showcased the latest in mobile technologies. Although new smartphones starred, some of the biggest innovations were in other devices and AI.

Amid privacy changes and macroeconomic headwinds, social media will be the channel hurt most by the digital advertising downturn. For 2023, we have reduced our US social network ad spending forecast by $16.21 billion.

US consumers spent $2.17 billion on social media apps in 2022, nearly half a billion more than the year before, according to data.ai. Worldwide, social app spend hit $7.28 billion last year, up from $6.32 billion in 2021.

Meta gained a strong hold over the US social media app rankings last year, with Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook all boasting the highest numbers of downloads, according to Apptopia. Messaging app Telegram broke into the top 10 this year, as did relative newcomer BeReal.

We cut $5.51 billion from our US digital ad spending forecast for 2023, due to the fallout from Apple’s privacy changes, Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies, and a stricter regulatory environment. Along with inflation and a potential recession, these challenges will depress spending until 2025, when it should return to previously projected levels.

The US ad market has declined five months in a row, according to MediaPost and the Standard Media Index’s US Ad Market Tracker. But as people return to planes, trains, and automobiles, out-of-home (OOH) ad spend is growing. Here are five charts with what you need to know about this unique time for traditional, digital, and programmatic OOH advertising.

Your brand should already be on TikTok. Here are five charts evidencing that point.

Just 18% of US social media users are confident that Facebook protects their privacy and data, down from 27% last year. Confidence is particularly low among the oldest and youngest users surveyed, at 10% within the baby boomer generation and 18% within Gen Z.

US digital retail media ad spending will reach $61.15 billion by the end of our forecast period in 2024. This is nearly triple the 2020 figure of $20.81 billion and represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30.9% in that four-year span.

Among US social network users, those ages 18 and older will spend an average of 1 hour, 40 minutes per day on those platforms in 2022, the same amount as last year. This figure is peaking after pandemic restrictions fueled a rapid rise in social media use over the past two years, and it will decline by 2 minutes next year.

Are recent video and gaming outages a sign of an overburdened infrastructure? The increase in high-resolution 4K video and demanding multiplayer games could be bogging down network connections.

The majority of US social buyers still order from retailer websites, rather than directly on social platforms. In December, 61.5% said they made their most recent social commerce purchase on the retailer’s site, while 38.5% reported doing so through the social network’s checkout feature.

Snapchat’s user base in the region grew almost 70% in 2021, to 107 million, compared with just 3.4% in North America.

5G will become one of the most promising technologies for facilitating healthcare’s digital transformation. This report analyzes five patient applications of 5G. It also explores forward-looking organizations embracing 5G and how healthcare organizations can follow in their footsteps.

5G technology is poised to transform how media, entertainment, and marketing are produced, distributed, and consumed. This report discusses five ways that next-generation wireless networks could propel industry growth.

5G’s not free

When it comes to protecting users’ personal information and providing a safe online environment, social network users in the US give lower marks to Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter.