2019 is slowly coming to an end and the majority of us will share our December enjoyments on social networks that have sneaked into our daily lives over the past year even more.

Facebook remains the largest social platform in 2019, followed closely by its little brother Instagram. After a long time, Twitter lost its third position, incredibly quickly taken over by Tik Tok – currently the most popular social network among young people, which managed to reach 500 million users in an extremely short time. Youtube, however, concludes the year as the second most visited website (right after Google search engine) and reigns with an incredible number of daily views.

Shopping on Instagram changed the rules of the game

The growth of social networks and their increasing integration into our lives has led to a change in the way we do shopping (and subsequently advertising). As many as 67.2% of all online purchases are made from mobile devices, and this number is steadily increasing from year to year also in favour of social networks. Instagram has this year enabled the sale of products directly from the platform. Companies have experienced a 24% increase in sales from their own Instagram profiles. As a result, Instagram got a huge increase in advertising, while advertising on other platforms is slowly declining. As much as 65% of companies in 2019 intended a larger chunk of their advertising budget to collaborating with influencers rather than classic social media advertising.

And what awaits us in 2020?

Advertising, shopping, advertising, shopping and some more advertising. Social networks will focus even more on the customer shopping experience next year. All major social networks are already preparing new and additional integrations of shopping into their platforms, hoping to make up for the lost advertising budget, which is moving into the hands of influencers more and more. Influencer marketing is expected to continue to grow in 2020, passing 10 billion EUR mark in the first half of the year.

The video will rule again. All major platforms have already announced their focus also on video content in 2020, adding new options of making and sharing the videos. Statistics show that instead of traditional typing, users prefer to communicate via video and photo content, which also applies to correspondence in chat rooms (FB messenger, IG inbox, WhatsApp…).

The power of virtual reality: If we combine the two points above, we get the main focus of big companies in 2020 – virtual reality on social networks. Next year, the first practical virtual and argumentative realities in marketing and social networks are announced. Amazon wants to use VR to offer its users the possibility to virtually try on clothes or view other products. The entry into the world of virtual reality is also being explored by Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Bitmoji and WeChat, announcing that this is the next step of social networks.

In the spirit of the year that is ending, you can make a quick purchase of December’s gifts while scrolling through Instagram, post a nice photo during these holiday days, and, at least for the time being, see your loved ones in person.