Facebook makes ever more money from you. Should you be paid for it?

If you've been using Facebook recently, it may be time to ask for a raise. According to new figures from market-research website eMarketer, you've made the company over 20 per cent more this year than you did in 2014.

The average Facebook user now generates US$12.76 in advertising revenue every year, according to the analytics firm, up from US$10.03 the year before. That figure is expected to rise still further, to US$17.50 in 2017.

If you don't use Facebook, you may be earning Twitter money instead. The company makes US$7.75 per user, up from US$5.48 last year, and its average revenue per user (arpu) is expected to almost double over the next few years, to US$12.56 in 2017.

However, where you are changes how valuable you are to social networks. Break down the difference between Americans and the rest of the world and it becomes obvious why the US receives the bulk of the attention from Facebook and Twitter.

While one Facebook user outside the US will make the site US$7.71 this year, an American on the same site will earn it a whopping US$48.76. A similar discrepancy exists for Twitter: arpu is US$3.51 everywhere but America, and US$24.48 there.

Where will that extra money come from? Two places: advertisers paying more to sell products on social networks, and social networks working out more ways to show you adverts. It may seem like Facebook and Twitter have reached saturation point on the number of adverts they display, but with both sites constantly developing new products, there will always be new places to put ads.