Facebook has been under fire from the mainstream media for about a year, but its brand-safety and privacy scandals haven’t deterred advertisers. In its recent Q4 earnings report, the social giant reported its North American average ad revenues per user (AARPU) were up nearly 30%, and more advertisers than ever are buying.
AARPU has grown rapidly even as usage of ad-supported Facebook properties has stagnated. That could be due to higher ad loads or higher prices for the same ads; Facebook executives talked up improved targeting capabilities on its earnings call. It could also be due to significant contributions from Facebook Audience Network ads—off-property placements that make up an unknown share of Facebook's ad revenues. Whatever the reason, the upshot is that advertisers end up paying more for the average Facebook user’s attention.
We estimate that the average US adult spent just 6.5% of their daily digital media time with Facebook in 2018. Looking more narrowly at nonvoice mobile activity, Facebook accounted for less than 9% of daily time. We don’t break out Instagram usage time by device, but we estimate that the average adult spent an additional 2.4% of daily digital media time on Instagram last year, for a total of less than 9% of digital media time on Facebook’s ad-supported properties.