eMarketer global director of public relations Douglas Clark compares our latest US adoption figures for young adults on Facebook against those of its sister platform Instagram and fierce competitor Snapchat.

Though social commerce conversions will remain a challenge, the mid-funnel opportunity is growing. Instagram’s continued rollout of shoppable content features is helping brands and influencers spotlight product content and forge a better path to purchase. Pinterest has also introduced features to make it easier for retailers to upload and promote product content. And video-first platforms Snapchat and TikTok are both testing shoppable content features.

With 2020 shaping up to be a chaotic year, these are the video trends marketers will need to pay attention to.

eMarketer vice president of business development Marissa Coslov explores Facebook adoption in the UK by age group and why the platform is losing teens and young adults.

eMarketer junior forecasting analyst Nazmul Islam compares our mobile messaging app usage numbers with our mobile social networking usage figures and the factors behind the increasing gap.

Facebook will have 1.73 billion worldwide users in 2019 and will add a quarter of a billion more users by 2023. These gains are primarily happening in developing countries, while developed markets including South Korea, Japan and France are shedding users.

Instagram will remain the world’s second-largest social network in 2019, with 788.4 million users. Growth will primarily come from emerging or developing economies, including Russia and India, but every country that we track will add new users in 2019.

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.

Advertisers are making significant investments in connected TV as the TV landscape becomes more fragmented.

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

Advertisers are embracing the popularity of connected TV by allocating more money to streaming platforms.

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.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco breaks down our latest ad spend projections for Snapchat and how the platform rebounded from a weak 2018.

Mobile video viewing habits are evolving, and along with that comes a variety of opportunities for creators and publishers to monetize their content—and, in turn, for marketers and advertisers to reach audiences.