The social media advertising expenditure is forecast to reach $55bn in 2019, overtaking advertising expenditure on printed newspapers, which will total $50bn, according to the new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts published today by Zenith, the ROI agency.

“Social media advertising is the fastest‐growing component of Internet advertising – it grew 51 per cent in 2016, and we forecast it to grow at an average rate of 20 per cent a year to 2019. Newspaper advertising, meanwhile, is shrinking by 5 per cent a year as circulations continue to fall,” a statement said.

Newspaper adspend has shrunk every year since peaking at $113bn in 2007, and by 2019 will be back to levels last seen in 1985 – and that’s without adjusting for inflation. Note that these newspaper figures only includes advertising in printed editions – newspapers’ online revenues are included in the Internet advertising total.

Global adspend growth to continue

The global ad market has grown at a steady pace of 4 per cent‐5 per cent a year since the beginning of the decade, and it is expected to continue to do so through to 2019, according to the new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts published today by Zenith, the ROI agency.

“Our forecast for 2017 is for 4.4 per cent growth (unchanged since we last published our forecasts in December), down slightly from 4.6 per cent growth in 2016. We forecast another 4.4 per cent growth in 2018, followed by 4.2 per cent in 2019. These rates are slightly below the growth rates that the IMF forecasts for nominal GDP,” a statement said.