Facebook Ad-Spend Growth From National Marketers Is Slowing, Intelligence Firm’s Data Shows

Slight cracks might be appearing in the dominance of the digital-advertising duopoly, particularly Facebook, as some data suggests a slowdown in the rate of ad-revenue growth for the giant social platform, as well as a shrinking of the combined Google-Facebook share of the overall advertising pie.

This might be perceived by some legacy media brands as good news as 2018 comes to a close, but the data still shows double-digit-ad growth, even for Facebook, which has endured an unprecedented 12-month run of bad publicity. And the revenue that’s shifting from the Google-Facebook duopoly is going to new players, not necessarily to traditional media.

Still, there’s a story in the relative movement of ad spending. The advertising intelligence service Standard Media Index reports that Facebook’s growth from national advertisers (not including local/SMBs) is slowing. In Q1 of this year, SMI reports, Facebook’s year-over-year ad-revenue growth rate was 35%. In Q2, it was 30%. And in Q3, the rate of growth slowed again, to 16%, according to SMI.

That performance also lags the prior year, according to SMI. In the January-October period of 2018, Facebook’s ad revenue from national marketers was up 25% from 2017, but in the same period of 2017, it was up by 41%  over 2016.

“Facebook’s growth from national marketers is slowing, indicating that major brands are concerned with recent events there and are focusing on brand-safe environments,” SMI CEO James Fennessy said this month in a statement. “National marketers don’t have the same issues with platforms like Roku, as we saw their revenues jump by 67% in Q3, albeit from a much smaller base.”

Reference: Forbes