Stock in Facebook continued to tank Friday as European authorities look into how the site targets advertising even as a new report finds mobile advertising will surpass $100 billion by 2016.
The report by eMarketer finds that advertising on smartphones and tablets will account for more than 50 percent of all digital advertising for the first time. The forecast finds that mobile advertising will have increased 430 percent between 2013 and 2016.
Between 2016 and 2019, eMarketer believes spending on mobile advertising will nearly double and account for more than 70 percent of digital ad spending.
Another study by Strategy Analytics of Boston found that Facebook hauled in 75 percent of all advertising dollars spent on social media last year, while Twitter nabbed just 8 percent. In total, Facebook took $11.4 billion of the $15.3 billion total spent on social media ads in 2014.
Facebook’s complete dominance is even more impressive considering the social network is banned in China, home to an enormous and social media-loving population.
“Overall, the social network market continues to show strong growth across all regions as the major social network platforms drive usage and engagement via improved integration of digital media content,” Leika Kawasaki, author of Strategy Analytics’ report, said in a release. “While Facebook currently dominates the global social network market, its absence in China allows local social networks such as QZone and Tencent Weibo to gain traction in the rapidly expanding Chinese digital advertising market.”
Still, Facebook’s targeted advertising strategy continue to cause suspicion among its users and government regulators – blights on the company’s image that causes turbulence for it on Wall Street.
Watchdogs from the European Union are investigating Facebook for violating privacy policies and selling off user’s information to advertisers. About 300 million Europeans, a little less than the entire United States population, use Facebook, according to the social network.
