Global advertising spending is expected to exceed $1 trillion this yearRetail Media and Connected TV will lead advertising investment in 2026.
In its Global Ad Spend Outlook 2024/25: A Decade of Consolidation study, Warc drew on aggregated data from 100 markets to determine that global ad spend will grow by 10.5% this year, surpassing $1 trillion. This would be the best performance in six years if the post-Covid recovery in 2021 (+27.9% year-on-year) is ignored.
Ad spend is anticipated to increase next year (+7.2%) and in 2026 (+7.0%), taking the global advertising market to $1.23 trillion. Over the past paytm phone number data decade, global ad spend has more than doubled and grown 2.8 times faster than global economic output since 2014. Meta, Amazon and Alphabet account for over 70% of this incremental growth in spend. This trio is forecast to attract 43.6% of total ad spend this year, rising to over 46% by 2026.
New projections show that pureplay internet companies will see a 14% increase in advertising revenue this year, reaching a total of $735.7 billion. In total, nearly nine in ten (88.5%) additional dollars spent on advertising this year will go to online-only companies, with half (52.9%) paid to Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. Together, pureplay platforms are projected to account for more than 70% of all global ad spend next year.
Retail media (21.3%), social media (14.2%) and search (12.1%) are projected to lead digital growth in 2024. These three sectors alone account for more than 85% of online spend and nearly three in five (58.7%) additional dollars spent on advertising worldwide this year. All are benefiting from the increased adoption of AI-powered advertising services and the growing appreciation of first-party data.
Key findings outlined in Warc’s Global Ad Spend Outlook 2024/25 include:
Media Trends : At $241.8 billion by 2024, social media is the largest single advertising channel measured in Warc’s study, having overtaken search (excluding retail media) for the first time last year. It accounts for 22.6% of all global ad spend this year and is projected to rise to a 23.6% share by the end of 2026.
In the social media space, Meta is the largest single player, with 62.6% of the market this year. However, its share is being eroded, notably by Douyin and TikTok owner Bytedance, which now attracts a fifth (20.1%) of all social media spend, up from a share of just 9.3% five years ago. TikTok is on track to account for more than half of its parent company’s advertising revenue for the first time next year, although uncertainty remains over the platform’s future in the US, its largest market by far, with 170 million monthly active users.
