Twitter uptake in Latin America was seemingly one of the healthiest worldwide, with 23% of internet users in the region actively using the social network in Q4 2014.
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The region trailed only the Middle East and Africa (29%) in that context. Globally, an estimated 21% of internet users between 16 and 64 years old used or contributed to the platform via any device in the month prior to the research, according to GlobalWebIndex data released in April 2015.
But considering that overall internet uptake is significantly lower in Latin America and the Middle East and Africa than in the rest of regions measured by GlobalWebIndex, the Twitter user bases in those continents are not necessarily larger in absolute terms.
eMarketer estimates that a more conservative 8.0% of internet users of all ages worldwide will access Twitter via any device at least monthly in 2015. That means there will be roughly a quarter of a billion Twitter users globally this year. By comparison, there will be 1.24 billion Facebook users.
While Twitter uptake will reach 9.2% among internet users in Latin America this year—trailing only North America (20.7%) and Western Europe (13.2%) by that metric—that means just 30.1 million people in the region will have an account and use it regularly. Almost half of that group will live in Brazil (14.2 million) this year, with Mexico and Argentina contributing 8.1 million and 4.1 million, respectively.
Active Twitter user expansion in Latin America (17.4%) will be higher than any other region in 2015 and will surpass the 14.1% global average, eMarketer projects.
But Latin America’s growth rate will drop to 10.1% next year, putting it behind three regions—the Middle East and Africa (15.3%), Central and Eastern Europe (12.2%) and Asia-Pacific (11.9%)—and below the worldwide average of 10.7%.
Social media ad spending is set to reach $676.6 million in Latin America in 2015, eMarketer estimates. Though eMarketer does not currently break down that figure by property in the region, it is worth noting that Twitter ad spending is expected to surpass $2 billion worldwide this year.
That figure makes the social network a distant second to Facebook’s $15.50 billion but puts it well ahead of LinkedIn’s $903.6 million. ■