Digital advertising may be top media category in 2016: Report

Digital advertising is expected to become the No. 1 media category in 2016, according to a comScore report released exclusively to CNBC on Thursday.

Revenue for the category totaled $49.5 billion in 2014, up 16 percent from the previous year, the report said. The first quarter of 2015 had $13.3 billion in revenue, also a rise of 16 percent from the year-earlier period. Digital advertising is now equal to about 80 percent of TV ad spend and is forecast to surpass TV next year, comScore said.

But this doesn't spell the end for TV ad revenue streams just yet.

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"There is yet no evidence that television advertising in total is dropping," comScore co-founder Gian Fulgoni told CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on Thursday.

Fulgoni said he was particularly impressed with Facebook's market share of digital ads. On Wednesday the company reported that its daily average users in the second quarter came in at 968 million—besting Wall Street's expectations for about 960 million.

"People are spending more time on their mobile devices and on Facebook apps," Sheryl Sandberg, the social network's chief operating officer, said on the earnings call, saying that the company gets more than one out of every five minutes spent on smartphones in the U.S.

"It's going to be very interesting to see what happens going forward as Facebook monetizes its video feeds more and more," Fulgoni said. "I think there are some tremendous opportunities for them."

Mobile and video are the fastest-growing segments of digital advertising, according to comScore. The two formats, along with static banners and some other forms of display ads (but excluding search), had total revenue of $26 billion in 2014.

—CNBC's Everett Rosenfeld contributed to this report.