Global Facebook Ad Spend

You’ve heard it before: social media is becoming pay-to-play, and a new report seems to indicate that statement really is on the money. A new report from eMarketer estimates global spending on social media advertising will total $23.68 billion. That’s “billion” with a “b”.

Most of the money will be spent on Facebook, roughly 65.5% of it. However, Twitter is gaining share and is expected to bring in about 7.1% more revenue this year, bringing it to about $2.09 billion. While still nothing to brush off, LinkedIn is expected to earn $900 million in ad revenue in 2015 – a dip from 2014.

Amazon Destinations Debuts

Amazon seems to be getting in on the travel and tourism game with the launch of its new hotel product and brand, Amazon Destinations. Destinations works directly with hoteliers and mainly operates to help with weekend getaways or road trips near major metropolitan areas, meaning you won’t see flight options or deals.

Skift reports the focus is to help people looking for that weekend away and to boost local travel. Destinations differs from Amazon Local by favoring published rates and working with hotels for an ongoing basis and not just when rooms need to be filled. The service is still in its infancy and reviews are minimal compared to the 200 million currently on TripAdvisor, though some do appear.

Facebook Plays with its Algorithm…Again

A change to Facebook’s algorithm will increase the updates from friends seen and decrease what’s seen about their activity on Facebook. What does this mean? You’re less likely to see content your friends like or comment on in your Facebook newsfeed, meaning brand pages that rely on audience activity for virality may go down. While Facebook says the move was done to give more relevant content to users one can’t help but wonder about inevitable step closer toward the play-to-pay model for brands to get content seen.