Facebook Inc is now the second-biggest seller of online advertisements after Google Inc, researcher EMarketer Inc said.
The world’s largest social-networking service is on track to take in US$3.17 billion, or 7.4 percent, of US digital-ad spending this year, while Google will account for US$17 billion, or 40 percent, EMarketer said in a blog post yesterday.
Facebook was fourth behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Corp last year.
Facebook is stepping up its ad efforts, generating half of revenue from mobile and testing video promotions that play automatically in users’ news feeds. Instagram, which Facebook bought for more than US$700 million last year, is also rolling out ads on its photo-sharing service. Facebook and its rivals are battling for a share of a digital-ad market that is projected to grow 25 percent to US$53.4 billion in the US in 2015.
“Facebook and Google are both major drivers and recipients of this growing market, domestically and internationally,” EMarketer said.
Both companies are also the top-two ad publishers globally, the researcher said.
Mobile ad spending will account for 23 percent of digital-ad spending this year, up from 12 percent last year, EMarketer said.
In related news, Facebook and chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg are selling a combined 70 million shares of Class A stock, as the company prepares to join the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
The offering includes more than 41 million shares from Zuckerberg, who will also buy Class B shares that carry more voting weight.
After a premarket stock dip of more than 4 percent on the news, Facebook’s stock recovered somewhat and was down less than 1 percent in afternoon trading on Thursday.
The company said that the Class A shares will be offered mainly to index funds whose portfolios are based on stocks included in the index. The S&P 500 was set to add Facebook after markets closed yesterday.
At Wednesday’s closing price of US$55.57 per share, the total value of the offering, not counting expenses, would be about US$3.89 billion. Zuckerberg’s offering of 41.3 million shares would generate about US$2.3 billion based on Wednesday’s close, not counting expenses.
The company said Zuckerberg will use most of the proceeds from his sale of Class A shares to pay taxes he will incur in connection with exercising an option to buy 60 million shares of Class B stock. He is also using part of it for charitable contributions.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
RSS