Facebook and Google are set to take nearly half of all digital advertising spend in 2017, according to a new forecast report by eMarketer.

Combining Google’s predicted $72.69 billion in ad revenue this year with Facebook’s $33.76 billion brings the two ad techs’ share of total global digital advertising spend to 46.4%.

YouTube concerns outweighed

Search giant Google claims the larger predicted stake despite very public criticism over its ability to police YouTube ad placements, with a number of global brands pulling involvement having been unwittingly sponsoring extremist videos.

However, amid an apology at Advertising Week Europe, Google’s EMEA president Matt Brittin took the opportunity to counter the scale of the accusations as a matter of “a handful of impressions, and pennies not pounds”.

Indeed, any concerns over ad placements look to be dwarfed by Google’s continued dominance in its core arena, predicted to claim roughly 78% of total search ad revenues this year, driven by the ongoing consumer shift to mobile.

“Google’s dominance in search, especially mobile search, is largely coming from the growing tendency of consumers to turn to their smartphones to look up everything from the details of a product to directions,” said eMarketer forecasting analyst Monica Peart.

“Google and mobile search as a whole will continue to benefit from this behavioral shift,” Peart added.

Facebook reaps display dollars

For Facebook, it’s the display ad dollars that it will keep it shouldering at the top of the ad tech league table; eMarketer predicts the social network’s display business will jump up 32.1% to $16.33 billion, siphoning revenue from Google, Yahoo and Twitter to seal a 39% stake of the US display market.

Further boons for the Facebook accounts sheet come from increased user time on the service, while Instagram will account for a fifth (20%) of mobile revenues this year – a hike of 5% from 2016.

“Facebook’s users are increasingly captivated by videos on the platform – not just on Facebook, but on Instagram as well. Video, both live and recorded, is a key driver of growing user engagement and advertiser enthusiasm,” commented Peart.

Meanwhile, with an IPO under its belt, eMarketer expects Snapchat is poised for “explosive growth” this year, with ad revenue set to grow 157.8% to $770 million in the US. However, with its mobile display business still in early form, Snapchat’s share of US mobile ad market will sit at just 1.3%, growing to 2.7% by 2019.