Social network ad spend per user will exceed $30 this year in North America, easily the highest mark of any region, says eMarketer in a new estimate. The $32.82 projection for this year would represent a 30.7% increase from the estimated $26.05 in ad spending per user in the region last year. Worldwide, social ad spend per user ought to reach roughly $7 this year, a 27% rise over 2013’s estimate of $6.18.
Clearly, eMarketer sees social networking ad spend increasing at a faster clip than user growth. While the Middle East & Africa region is predicted to see the fastest rate of per-user spending growth (63.9% this year), that region also has the smallest current per-user spend (projected to be $0.50 this year). One would expect faster growth rates from the smaller-spending regions, but the pace of growth seen in the larger, more mature markets of North America and Western Europe (21.3% this year) suggests that ad spending growth will continue to outstrip user growth for the near future.
Various reports suggest that this trend should certainly be the case in the US: social ad spending is predicted to see a steady, native-ad-driven, rise even as, at close to 80% of adult internet users in the US, social networking adoption is nearing saturation.
Last year, eMarketer compiled some estimates on total digital ad spending per user, which it pegged at roughly $167 in North America ($174 in the US). A MarketingCharts analysis of online ad spend per user in the US found that for every dollar spent on an online user in 2003, advertisers were spending about $2.84 a decade later in 2012.
About the Data: The eMarketer estimates include display, search, video and other forms of paid advertising appearing within social networks, social games and social applications. The figures exclude spending by marketers that goes toward developing or maintaining social network profile pages or branded applications.
