Financial services firms are increasing their digital budgets, particularly for mobile, to target young consumers.

Healthcare and pharma ad spend is growing at a similar pace to other verticals, but FDA regulations and strict privacy laws restrict overall budgets.

Media and entertainment companies are increasing their digital ad spend at a greater rate than other verticals as revenues surge in the music and film industries and digital video and gaming platforms try to outcompete one another.

Retail ad budgets continue to grow at a steady pace as retail stalwarts battle disruption from Amazon and other digitally savvy companies.

Telecom and consumer electronics companies are increasing their digital ad spend as they adjust to rapidly changing technology developments.

This report covers key events in the global social media market, new data, trends and business activity in Q2 2019. It also includes our updated forecasts for social network users in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and worldwide.

US advertisers are committing more dollars upfront for linear TV and digital video, however the percentage of digital video ads being sold programmatically continues to increase.

After initially struggling to gain traction, social commerce has finally begun to materialize as platforms, including Instagram and Pinterest, fill the need for discovery in the digital shopping environment.

Facebook users are spending less time on the social platform, and that is leading to a reduction in overall time spent with social networks in the US. Time spent on social networks declined by 1 minute last year, a stark difference from the cumulative 13-minute gain in 2016 and 2017.

The majority of social commerce in the US takes place on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook, though Snapchat is also part of the mix.

As media time reaches a saturation point, consumers in Canada are showing a decided taste for the immediacy of digital.

After years of steady increases, time spent on social media by US social network users fell last year. Those figures will flatten as the intensity of Facebook usage starts to moderate and activities such as digital video and video games draw more time and attention.

Facebook’s move last year to discourage passive consumption of content, especially videos, has impacted engagement. Average daily time spent on the platform by US adult users fell by 3 minutes in 2018. And that time will remain unchanged this year, per the latest eMarketer forecast on US time spent with media. In fact, we have reduced our forecast for Facebook compared with the previous figures released in Q3 2018.

According to an April 2019 survey of global consumers from mobile video ad network AdColony, three in five respondents said they encounter offensive content on Facebook, and about half that figure noted the same was true of YouTube. Inappropriate content appearing on Google, in mobile games, or on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat was less likely, but still apparent.

Fewer people in the US are accessing social networking sites via computers, with the majority of users now exclusively on mobile devices. We forecast that 51.7% of US social network users will be mobile-only in 2019.

According to a spring 2019 report from investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffray, 73% of Gen Zers (those ages 7 to 22, per the report) said they prefer brands to contact them about new products through Instagram, with Snapchat following as the preferred method at roughly 50%.

The first in a series of quarterly social media reports, this report examines major developments in the global social media market based on trends, business activity and new data released in Q1 2019.

Following its unpopular redesign, Snapchat has been struggling to gain users in the US. As a result, eMarketer has significantly downgraded its growth outlook for Snapchat in its latest US social usage forecast. For the first time, Snapchat will lose US users this year, with growth expected to flatten in 2020.

More than 35 million Americans are enhancing their social media experiences with augmented reality (AR), according to our estimates. In today’s “eMarketer Daily Forecast,” forecasting analyst Showmik Podder provides a quick look at AR usage among US social network users. Tune in.

There is an exodus from Snapchat in the UK. For the first time since its inception, the social network’s user base will begin to decline in 2019, according to eMarketer’s latest UK social usage forecast. Since last year’s redesign of the platform, users are leaving in favor of Instagram and other competitors.