Page 15 - Adnews Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

for the second quarter, up 10 per cent from US$16.6 billion the same time last year. Revenue for Asia Pacific grew to US$3.341 billion from US$3.012 billion the previous year. While Facebook expects usage to decline as restrictions ease, its monthly active users (MAUs) was 2.7 billion, up 12 per cent year-on-year from 2.6 billion last year. For Asia Pacific, its MAUs was 1.142 billion, up from 1.003 billion the same time last year.
The social media giant wasn’t only dealing with a pandemic, but a US-based boycott from hundreds of brands, led by the Stop Hate for Profit movement, over its handling of misinformation and harmful content. Multinationals including Unilever, Coca-Cola and LEGO joined the list, with some taking their boycott right across all social media platforms around the globe with it impact- ing spend in Australia. According to reports, some of the biggest spenders were among the boycott, including Starbucks which spent US$95 million on the platform last year and Diageo which spent US$23 million.
Despite the size of the protest, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was confident the company could withstand the hit, saying in its latest earn- ings call that the expected impact was misguided by the assumption Facebook was reliant on “a few large advertisers” when the biggest part of its business is “serving small businesses”.
“Our advertising is one of the most effective tools that small busi- nesses have to find customers, to grow their businesses, and to create jobs,” Zuckerberg said in a call to analysts, and this would be more true throughout the pandemic.
David Wehner, chief financial officer, says growth was primarily driven by small and medium-sized businesses around the world
during the quarter.
“As a result, we continue to see increased diversification among our advertiser base. In Q2, our top 100 advertisers represented 16 per cent of ad revenue which is a lower percentage than a year ago,” said Wehner.
“On a user regional basis, ad revenue was strongest in the US and Canada, Asia Pacific and Europe, which grew 14 per cent, 11 per cent and 9 per cent, respec- tively. The rest of the world declined 6 per cent and was impacted by challenging macroe- conomic conditions as well as foreign currency headwinds.”
Meanwhile, Snapchat’s revenue grew, although at a slower rate, by 17 per cent year-on-year to reach US$454 million, compared to US$388 million in the same period last year. The app added an extra nine million users in the second quarter to reach a total 238 million average daily active users, up 17 per cent year-on-year.
On the other hand, Twitter con- firmed it’s looking at subscriptions as a way to “complement” declin- ing advertising revenue. The social media company reported revenue of US$683 million in the second quarter, down 19 per cent year-on- year. At the same time, the plat- form has added users quicker than expected, with average monetisa- ble daily active users up 34 per cent year-over-year to 186 million, marking the company’s highest growth rate to date.
According to reports, privately owned TikTok booked around US$5.64 billion in revenue for the January-March quarter, repre- senting growth of more than 130 per cent compared with the same period the year prior. The com- pany doesn’t provide a break- down of users in Australia, but Roy Morgan figures from February estimate that it had 1.6 million users locally, a number that’s no doubt shot up since.
Locally, media buyers put social media’s largely bet- ter-than-expected performance down to not only its reach but its ability to convert sales for busi- nesses that needed it more than ever and had less money to do so. We Are Social’s 2020 Digital Report found that Australians
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