The likes of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google are all now leading the charge when it comes to ad spend.
New research shows the four internet companies now rank among the US’s top 100 ad spenders for the first time.
Amazon was the highest ranking of the tech giants, ranking third after forking out $US4.47bn ($AU6.42bn) in 2018.
Netflix placed an emphasis on ad spend in 2018, with an increase of 70 per cent on the previous year.
But one of the biggest increases on the entire list came from Facebook, which more than tripled its ad spend in 2018.
Facebook made a reported $US16.6bn ($AU23.85) from ad revenue in the last quarter of 2018, and seemingly, it is now using some of the ad revenue it generates on itself.
Worldwide ad spend for the company soared to $US1.1bn ($AU1.58) – almost half of which was spent in the US – representing two per cent of its total revenue, the highest it has ever been.
Facebook has been vocal about its desire to regain the trust of its users following a year marred by accusations of election interference and a major data scandal.
The company ran a major out of home campaign in Australia in 2018 which displayed text like ‘Data misuse is not our friend’.
Interestingly, the final member of the ‘FAANG’ (a popular acronym for US tech giants) gang Apple actually saw a slight decline in ad spend in 2018, down one per cent from the previous year.
Although small, the decrease coincided with a year in which iPhone sales slowed significantly, the company selling almost 10 million fewer phones in the final quarter of 2018 than they had in 2017.
The drop was largely attributed to the company falling out of favour in the Chinese market.
