MUMBAI: Bullish is the mood at marketing effectiveness specialist Warc. The  firm had forecast in August 2024 that global advertising spend is on course to grow 10.5 per cent this year to a total of $1.07 trillion. Now, it has revised that growth upwards by 0.2 percentage points; its latest projection is that ad spends globally will grow by 10.7 per cent to touch  $1.08 trillion – the strongest growth rate in six years and the largest absolute rise on record if the post-Covid recovery of 2021 (+27.9 per cent year-on-year) is disregarded. 

Warc’s latest global projections are based on data aggregated from 100 markets worldwide. Online media is on course to drive the growth,  a good year for TV has also made a notable contribution. The good news is that spends on linear TV are rising and are expected to end the year higher by 1.9 per cent, at $153.6 billion, following two years of slippage. Political TV adverts (especially in the US), the Paris Olympics and Euro football in Q3 have buoyed the spends on TV. However, before you start apart applauding please note that  linear TV’s hold today stands at just 14.3 per cent of global advertising spend, much, much lower than the heady days of a 41.3 per cent share in 2013. 

We have all heard it before: Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are Pacmen increasingly swallowing up ad dollars in large chunks of billions every year. Warc data supports that. It stated that pure play online internet businesses like that of the three big tech firms, will see ad revenue growths of 14.1 per cent reaching $741.4 billion – accounting for a total of 68.8 per cent of all spends. Gadzillions!

Social media ad spends are expected to leap upwards by 19.3 per cent reaching $252.7 billion -equalling 23.5 per cent of the total ad market. This is mostly because the sales folks at Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have been selling hard leading to better than expected results at the three firms during the first nine months of this year. 

Overall ad spend growth is also expected to be buoyant next year at 7.6 per cent in 2025, and seven per cent in 2026 taking the global ad market to $1.24 trillion. For all those who have been doomsayers predicting the slamming of brakes on advertising here’s some facts: global ad investments have more than doubled over  the past 10 years and have grown 2.8 times faster than global economic output since 2014.

Warc director of data, intelligence and forecasting and author of the research James McDonald said: “Our latest forecast anticipates $104bn in incremental advertising spend worldwide this year, the largest rise in history if the post-pandemic recovery year of 2021 were discounted. Whether this boom will sustain remains unclear, however, as 2025 presents a sliding doors moment due to heightened regulatory pressures on Google and TikTok – together a quarter of the ad market outside of China. This, alongside an increasingly challenging geopolitical climate, may spell uncertain times ahead for the businesses that rely on advertising trade.”

(The image for this report was created using OpenArt AI. No copyright infringement is intended)