Facebook will receive more than two-thirds of all social media ad spending this year, according to a new study by eMarketer. Facebook is set to generate an estimated $22.37 billion (about £17 billion) in revenue in 2016, which is a staggering 30 per cent increase on the figure recorded for the previous 12 months.

The report noted that Facebook is currently witnessing “momentum across its ads business,” and its dominant position has seen it secure a huge chunk of the $32.97 billion (about £25 billion) total social network ad spending. In comparison, Twitter has a 7.9 per cent share, while other networks such as Instagram account for 24.2 per cent.

“On the branding side, video ads are becoming more and more popular for marketers whose objective is broad awareness,” eMarketer's principal analyst, Debra Aho Williamson, said. “And products like Dynamic Ads, which let advertisers upload their product catalog to Facebook and then deliver relevant targeted ads, are proving highly effective for marketers that want to drive lower-funnel activities, such as purchases."

Marketing vehicle

Williamson added that Facebook Messenger could potentially become a huge market for advertisers, as they are already eager to experiment with chat bots on the platform. All of the current growth is solely due to ads on the main Facebook site itself, and it remains unclear whether Messenger will become a “marketing vehicle” in the near future.

One frontier that will become a significant source of ad revenue in the years to come is video content advertising. Facebook VP EMEA Nicola Mendelsohn admitted last month that its newsfeed could be all video by the beginning of the next decade due to the steady decline in posts containing text. She concluded: “We're seeing a massive increase as I've said on both pictures and video. So yeah, if I was having a bet, I would say video, video, video."

Separate research by ad company Nanigans has revealed that its retailer clients saw a 75 per cent increase in return on ad spend on Facebook during the second quarter of the year, while 80 per cent of the investment was devoted to engaging customers on smartphones and tablets.