Social media advertising spend will hit 50 billion by 2019, ad agency Zenith said in its “Advertising Expenditure Forecasts” study.

This should come as no surprise to brands and agencies who have been leveraging social media advertising for some time. Social advertising has grown year on year by 60% and will see $31.6 billion spent in 2016. As it stands, social advertising is on course to surpass print media spend by the end of 2019, with the most recent report suggesting spend will top $100 billion in 2021.

The hidden truth within these reports is the growing dominance of social video. Currently, the fastest growing area of social advertising, social video advertising, is up 85% since 2014 and continuing to grow at 18% each year. Facebook currently receives over eight billion daily views and the social media giant is on course to make up 20% of all internet advertising by 2019.

Social video has matured and evolved in 2016; fans now want professional TV quality video in real-time or as close to live as can be: the reason many of the world’s leading brands and rights-holders partner with Grabyo is to deliver a professional broadcast experience to multiple social media channels in a matter of seconds.

New ways to monetize video content

With the proliferation of social advertising, brands, rights-holders and broadcasters are looking for ways to monetize their video content, particularly live content. Despite this, some TV advertisers have been slow to migrate to Facebook ads due to their concern with the deliverability, specifically of video ads, as they are interspersed with other forms of advertising (Read more: Real time ads for Facebook Live).

Facebook is already testing new ways to increase the ad spend around live video, such as testing in-stream personalised ads for Facebook Live, and will continue to look at ways to increase the prominence of video content displayed within its mobile app. The introduction of a Facebook video tab which would create a video discovery hub to rival YouTube, and the inclusion of live stream paid engagement boosts would increase the amount of video content readily available to users. As video and live content become more ingrained in the day to day usage, it stands to reason more advertising bucks will be dedicated to video ads.

Where professional live video, paid advertising and monetization meet is still a grey area broadcasters and rights-holders struggle to take advantage of. The forthcoming changes to Facebook and increasing advertising budgets should go some way to facilitate widespread monetization of social video content.

Monetize video content on Facebook

The introduction of branded content to both Facebook Live and VOD content has allowed rights-holders and broadcasters to explore new avenues to monetize video content, particularly for rights-holders within sports and entertainment, broadening the scope of rights distribution alongside the linear TV model. Broadcasters and sponsors can now partner and distribute exclusively to social channels or rights-holders can look to exploit dark markets for TV distribution and partner with sponsors to maximise their rights deals and revenue.

It’s the potential for a rights-holder and sponsor combining to put significant Facebook ad spend behind an upcoming live broadcast, to manufacture a social audience, that could be the most interesting change to both social video production and rights distribution in 2017.

Grabyo is currently working with the world’s leading rights-holders and broadcasters to explore revolutionary new ways to leverage social video sponsorship. For more information on Grabyo and to add ease, speed and multi-platform distribution to your social video email hello@grabyo.com or try Grabyo today.