Facebook and Google’s long-held dominance within the digital ad market is showing some more cracks after a robust report from Pinterest Thursday.
Pinterest reported a humongous 62% year over year revenue growth
in its second quarter earnings release Thursday, edging into the duopoly’s turf. The dominance of the digital
ad giants was already showing some weakness on the heels of sturdy ad revenue reports last
week from Snap, Amazon and Twitter.
While ad revenue at Facebook and Google still
dwarfs that of its peers, coming in
at $16.62 billion and $32.6 billion within the second quarter, respectively, smaller players are showing they can still gain market share.
Digital media analytics firm eMarketer predicted the pair would lose their combined
advertising market share in 2019 as global digital ad spends is anticipated to
rise to $333.25 billion.
Strong reports from smaller advertising players
shows there’s still a craving from marketers to diversify their ad spend across platforms. New
advertising offerings could even be luring in businesses.
Snap introduced non-skip commercials in its shows through its new “Snap Select”
program, for instance.
Amazon and Twitter executives both told analysts on their
earnings calls that new and improved product offerings overall are giving
advertisers more of a
reason to advertise with them.
Following simply behind Pinterest’s rate of growth was Snap, which reported a 48% increase in total revenue
from the prior year, coming in at $388 million.
Amazon reported 37% year
over year growth in its “other” revenue class, which
primarily reflects advertising. Revenue for the segment was $3 billion in the second quarter, Amazon reported. And Twitter said it
grew 21% year over
year, reporting second-quarter
advertising revenue of $727 million.
Meanwhile, Facebook grew its ad revenue 28 % compared to the previous year’s quarter and Google
grew 16%. Google’s ad
revenue growth had been a concern for
investors within the first quarter, once it reported only 15% growth compared to 24% during the same period in 2018.
At the time, Google Chief financial officer Ruth
Porat partially blamed product changes in YouTube
for the holdup, however said within the second
quarter that the video platform had been a giant growth driver in recent months.