A 12% growth is expected to bring social media ad revenue to $640bn, which is dominated by six major players including Meta, YouTube and TikTok.
Social media ad revenue is now expected to reach $640bn by 2030, increasing the share of total online advertising from 33% to 44% – putting it alongside retail media as one of the fastest growing advertising channels.
This is consolidated within just half a dozen apps; Facebook, Instagram, Douyin, YouTube, TikTok, and WeChat, which generate as much as 90% of global social media advertising revenue, according to Omdia’s Social Media Advertising Market Landscape 2026 report.
Meta dominates this category through Facebook and Instagram. Together, the social giant accounted for 54% of the social media ad revenue in 2025 – rising to 70% if China is excluded.
Video content accounted for 60% of total social media ad revenue, driven predominantly by short-form formats like TikTok, YouTube shorts as well as reels, and stories on Facebook and Instagram.
Social media platforms are racing to make the most of these revenue streams, with Instagram giving creators the opportunity to add affiliate links to reels, and Meta launching its own Facebook affiliate programme.
Most recently, X took a step forward in building its creator infrastructure with the introduction of the Creator Connect ad product – aimed at encouraging influencers and creator content on the platform, using AI tools to connect brands with creators who share the desired target audience.
“AI-driven targeting and recommendation algorithms are turbocharging the advantage of these big players.” said Kia Ling Teoh, principal analyst at Omdia. “These capabilities favour ‘walled garden’ platforms with deep user data and sophisticated computing infrastructure, locking out smaller players and funnelling ad dollars to the top.”
The nature of social media dictates a deeply active and engaged users, with advertisers able to gain extensive insights into their audiences and behaviour. This figures from Omdia’s report, echoe AA/WARC’s latest expenditure report, which showed double digit growth in social media during Q4 2025.
