Facebook and Google Set to Lose Advertising Duopoly

Facebook (now known as Meta) and Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, are set to lose their long-held dominance over the advertising market this year, dropping below 50 percent of the market for the first time in nearly a decade.

Increased competition from Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and new entrants into the market are believed to be the cause of the dominant duo’s relative decline.

Via Benzinga:

According to Insider Intelligence, this will be the first year since 2014 that these two corporations won’t hold the majority share of the market as their share of revenues are expected to drop to 48.4 percent in what will be their fifth annual decline.

Unlike companies worldwide are cutting their advertising budgets in response to rising interest rates and high inflation, tech giants are going full speed ahead. They are even joining forces such as Microsoft and Netflix Inc who announced back in July that they will build an advertisement-supported tier of its streaming service.

Even Apple is redefining its advertising strategy and doubling its digital advertising business, with research group Evercore ISI expecting the iPhone maker forecasting a $30 billion ads business by 2026.

Digital advertising has been a key vector of online censorship. The industry was quick to respond to pressure from the corporate media and left-wing activist groups after 2016, boycotting conservative media as well as social media platforms including YouTube and Facebook that were seen as insufficiently censorious.

More recently, major advertisers have pulled out from Twitter following new owner Elon Musk’s decision to restore the accounts of a number of prominent conservatives, including former President Donald Trump.

Platforms that have managed to establish revenue streams independent of ad revenue, notably Substack, have proven somewhat more resilient to censorship pressure.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.