According to market research firm eMarketer, Meta platform will surpass Google this year and become the world's leading digital advertising business giant.Meta Platforms (META) is expected to surpass Alphabet Inc's Google to become the world's No. 1 digital advertising company, a first for the social media company.
Mark Zuckerberg smiles while holding a microphone at the 2024 SIGGRAPH conference.
Advertising research firm eMarketer expects Meta’s net ad revenue this year to surpass Google’s$243.46 billion, slightly surpassing Google’s $239.54 billion. The agency’s statistics exclude traffic and other content acquisition costs, such as Google’s share of fees to content creators.
Meta's advertising business has grown, mainly due to the success of new advertising products such as Reels short videos, as well as the overall boost brought by artificial intelligence.
Max Willens, chief analyst at the research firm, said Meta showed "amazing patience" by gradually rolling out ads after cultivating large-scale user habits on products such as Reels, microblogging platform Threads and messaging app WhatsApp.
eMarketer expects Meta’s global advertising growth to increase from 22.1% in 2025 to 24.1% this year. The prediction is particularly noteworthy because analysts believe Meta's recent advertising growth is unprecedented, especially given its current size, where the market had expected growth to slow. Google's global ad growth this year is expected to be flat at 11.9%.
A Google spokesman declined to comment. Meta also did not respond.
Meta said its artificial intelligence recommendation system drove more than 30% year-on-year growth in Reels viewing time in the United States last quarter, allowing the platform to serve more ads. Meta reportedly said Reels is on track to hit $50 billion in revenue over the next 12 months.
Artificial intelligence has also fundamentally changed the way some advertisers create ads on Meta’s platforms. Meta recently said annualized quarterly revenue from its video generation tool exceeded $10 billion in the fourth quarter.
Of course, the surge in performance driven by artificial intelligence also comes with high costs; Meta’s capital expenditures this year are expected to reach $135 billion.
Google's advertising business covers its dominant search platform, YouTube, the Google affiliate network that places ads on third-party websites, and other advertising-related businesses.
Although Google has long had a firm grip on the highly profitable search business, it is facing increasing competition, with rivals such as Amazon grabbing some market share. Part of the reason is that many consumers now start product searches directly on e-commerce platforms.
Google’s share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to be 48.5% this year, eMarketer said, falling below 50% for the first time in more than a decade. In addition, emerging players such as artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI and social media platforms such as TikTok are expected to reshape the search market landscape in the coming years.
Google's highly diversified business model is also a double-edged sword for advertising growth. Although YouTube Premium brings tens of billions of dollars in subscription revenue, it also prevents a large number of users from monetizing through advertising, thus limiting the growth of Google's advertising revenue.
Although the top structure of the digital advertising industry has changed, the overall advertising market is still concentrated on a few giants. According to eMarketer, the oligopoly formed by Meta, Google and Amazon is expected to further consolidate its dominance in the global digital advertising market this year. The combined market share of the three companies is expected to rise from 59.9% last year to 62.3%, showing that their control over the digital advertising industry continues to strengthen.