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Parts of the agency market are thriving. Consultancies for the first time captured Nos. 6 to 10 on the list of the world's biggest agency companies, and they are well-positioned with deep ties to the C-suite.

Digital, encompassing everything from creating a Facebook ad to digitally transforming how a marketer interacts with consumers, captured 51.3 percent of 2017 U.S. revenue for agencies of all disciplines, according to Ad Age Datacenter analysis. Digital's share has nearly doubled since 2009.

Growth is moderating. Agencies' U.S. digital revenue increased 7.0 percent in 2017, compared to growth rates of 8.0 percent in 2016 and 13.5 percent in 2015. Digital media employment rose 7.8 percent in 2017, the lowest growth since 2009.

eMarketer predicts the combined U.S. digital ad market share of Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL -0.23% Google and Facebook will fall for the first time this year, shrinking to 56.8% from 58.5% last year. At the same time, overall digital ad spending in the country is likely to grow nearly 19% to $107 billion in 2018.

That would give Google command of 37.2% of the market, down from 38.6%. Facebook’s market share will likely be 19.6%, down from 19.9%,

Advertisers’ relationships with Google and Facebook have grown tense in recent years amid controversies over ads appearing next to inappropriate content, measurement discrepancies, and questions over the tech companies’ roles in Russia’s efforts to spread misinformation to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The class action suit, meanwhile, alleges that rather than accepting internal proposals to fix the accuracy problems of “potential reach”, Facebook instead “developed talking points to deflect from the truth”. The tech giant did announce some changes to the ad tool in March 2019 — when it said an advertiser’s campaign’s estimated potential reach “is now based on how many people have been shown an ad on a Facebook Product in the past 30 days who match your desired audience and placement criteria” (versus the estimates being previously based on “people who were active users in the past 30 days”). But the litigants argue that the changes to the tool which displays an estimate to advertisers as they are beginning to create a campaign — and therefore when they’re deciding/considering whether/how much money to spend with Facebook — do not fully fix the issue of the metric not corresponding to the potential audience of people who could see the ad on Facebook.

Shazam execs' talk of using their proprietary data for advertising puts them in league with The Weather Company, Pandora and Amazon, which are all mining information like pollen count, song choices and product purchases to inform ad targeting. Mr. McGurn said the Shazam app ingests the live audio feed from 160 TV networks every day. That positions the app as an ally to TV networks trying to stem their share of ad spend from being siphoned online.

Shazam is also currying favor with TV networks as a way to drive viewership. For last fall's Country Music Association Awards, Shazam pushed alerts featuring the show's air date and time to the in-app news feeds of eight million users who might be interested in watching, like those who had previously tagged a Blake Shelton song. Ten million people received such a notification for The Grammys.

People who use Shazam to "tag" the game's broadcast this year will be shown a new Twitter-like timeline. The live content feed will document the game -- from tweets to photos to ads -- and is designed to keep people using Shazam for the duration. But even if people tune in and out of the app, Shazam has created a new ad-retargeting program that plugs into Facebook.

The study by Trademob said 40% of all clicks were either fraudulent clicks by publishers and bots looking to boost ad revenue or accidental clicks. Combined, the fraudulent and accidental clicks had conversion rates of less than 0.01%, making them essentially worthless to advertisers. 

They’ve abandoned the promise of helping companies genuinely connect with their customers. They’re not even very good at the model they’ve chosen, which is as a Web 1.0 ad seller.

Ads aren’t the focus on what marketers want from Facebook in the first place.

Facebook has completely gone back on what they originally promised marketers in 2007. It’s what they promote today. They sell this promise of connecting companies with their customers. Eighty-four percent of the time they don’t do that.

"Facebook is establishing itself as a destination for premium video content, and demonstrating a willingness to pay significant amounts of money for that content. Facebook can likely drive revenue growth to offset content costs, albeit at lower margins than what the company currently generates," analyst Brian Wieser wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. "However, because of measurement issues the company has faced in the past (and possibly a new one identified by a trade publication in Australia and replicated by us within the United States), we think the primary winner of Facebook's expansion in video will be third party measurement firms," he added.

Facebook apologized for overstating video viewership times in September last year. The company said a metric for average user time spent on videos was artificially inflated.

The firm's analyst cites Australian trade publication AdNews, which revealed last week "Facebook's claims to reach 1.7mm more 16-39 year-olds in Australia than exist in the country according to its census bureau."

cost-per-click (CPC) is down 2 percent year-over-year and 11 percent quarter-over-quarter, while clickthrough rate (CTR) rose 160 percent YoY and 20 percent QoQ. Facebook ad clicks overall were increased by 70 percent YoY and 48 percent QoQ. Impressions are up 40 percent YoY and 41 percent QoQ.

Comments on ad posts are up 16 percent YoY and 40 percent QoQ; likes are down 4 percent YoY and shares are up 2 percent. Engagement on video is up 25 percent YoY and 58 percent QoQ, showing that auto-play videos haven’t been as toxic as feared. Video plays are up 785 percent YoY and 134 percent QoQ after auto-play videos were implemented in Q4. Nearly 1/4 of all video plays on Facebook happen on Fridays. Posts with images still gain the most engagement, though the percentage of engagement for photo, link and text posts are all down YoY. Posts with links are up 77 percent YoY and 167 percent QoQ, as Facebook has made great strides in making link posts more visual. Most impressions in Q1 came on a Friday, with 15.7 percent of all impressions. Sunday is the least likely day to receive a comment on a post. Facebook referred revenue per visit is up 11 percent year-over-year and 2 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook produces 75 percent of traffic to retail sites, up 2 percent year-over-year and 13 percent quarter-over-quarter. Facebook refers 52 percent of social traffic to B2B high tech sites, up 34 percent year-over-year.

it is no longer relying solely on what Facebook users reveal about themselves. Instead, it is tapping into outside sources of data to learn even more about them — and to sell ads that are more finely targeted to them.

The push to refine targeted advertising reflects the company’s need to increase its revenue. Its shares are worth far less than its ambitious initial public offering price of $38 a share last May, and Wall Street wants to see it take concrete steps to prove to advertisers that it can show the right promotions to the right users and turn them into customers.

Last fall, it invited potential advertisers to provide the e-mail addresses of their customers; Facebook then found those customers among its users and showed them ads on behalf of the brands.