It has been a long time since media industry observers began to believe it was better to be Facebook than the New York Times, at least financially. Based on a forecast from the Zenith, an advertising agency, money spent on social media ad dollars will pass those spent on newspapers in 2020. It is another signal the newspaper industry’s decline hastens as its share of ad dollars spent declines.

The agency says about spending on social media ads:

Global advertising expenditure in social media will grow 72% between 2016 and 2019, rising from US$29bn to US$50bn, according to Zenith’s new Advertising Expenditure Forecasts, published today. Social media advertising will account for 20% of all internet advertising in 2019, up from 16% in 2016. Social media advertising is growing at 20% a year and by 2019 will be just 1% smaller than newspaper advertising (US$50.2bn for social media compared to US$50.7bn for newspapers). By 2020 social media will be comfortably ahead.

Social media platforms have benefitted from the rapid adoption of mobile technology, using it to embed themselves into their users’ daily lives. For many users, social media is the focal point of their social lives as well as their main source of news. Social media ads blend seamlessly into the news feed, and are much more effective than interruptive banner formats, especially on mobile devices.

The change is another indication that many people no longer get news directly from news media. Instead, it is filtered by the preferences of those on social media and their “friends.” Newspapers and other traditional media must chase viewers by the creation of major presences on social media. Based on the downward spiral in newspaper ad revenue, it has not worked, or at least has not worked well.

And finally, as a matter of speculation, new age news platforms like Buzzfeed and Business Insider have helped pull audiences away from traditional media, much of it due to their popularity on social media. Newspapers are left to fight a losing, multi-front war.

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