Ad Data Shows a Tale of Two Social Media Platforms

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, Yesterday

Following President Joe Biden's signing of a bill that would ban TikTok unless it is sold to a U.S. owner, Guideline released estimates for the share of U.S. social media ad spending going to each of the major platforms in recent years.

Not surprisingly, ByteDance-owned TikTok's share has grown from just 2% during the 12-months running between April 2020 and March 2021 to 18% during the same period currently.

The data also reveals a continuously precipitous drop for X Platform -- formerly Twitter -- since it was acquired by Elon Musk.

According to Guideline's estimates, X's share of social media ad spending declined from 13% prior to Musk's ownership to 2% currently.

To be fair, Guideline's estimates are derived from a pool of actual media-buying data compiled from the major agency holding companies and big independent media agencies, so it does not reflect some of the long-tail ad spending from small and medium size businesses that may be sustaining some of the ad revenues from X and other platforms.