The world’s biggest media agency buying group, GroupM, has today unveiled its global ad forecast report that predicts ad spends will remain soft for the coming 12 months.

The report, titled This Year Next Year, analyses the prospects of the 57 global markets that GroupM plays in.

GroupM’s global president of business intelligence, Brian Wieser, has predicted a deceleration in advertising growth this year versus 2018 (+5.7 per cent vs. +4.8 per cent) and in 2020 versus 2019 (+4.8 per cent vs. +3.9 per cent).

When it came to Australia, the report predicted ad spend would grow modestly in 2020 (up two per cent), however, it would improve over the 2021-2024 period. Up 3.2 per cent in 2021, up 3.4 per cent in 2022, up 3.6 per cent in 2023 and rising to 3.5 per cent in 2024.

When it came to the Australian market the report noted: “Australia’s trends will likely differ, as we see at the present time with that country’s economy soft and facing a real risk of recession for the first time in decades. The Australian ad market was likely only stable in 2019 versus 2018 and probably grows only slightly in 2020, for a two per cent gain expected next year.”

Other notable points from the report included:

• Digital companies around the world like Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Booking.com, eBay, Facebook, IAC, JD.com, Netflix and Uber account for $US36 billion in spending, accounting for a majority of the world’s growth in spending on advertising.
• Estimates for digital advertising are about $US230 billion in 2019. Google and Facebook are likely to generate somewhere around $175 billion on a net basis, while other large sellers of digital advertising—including Microsoft, Amazon, Verizon, Twitter and Snap – will generate approximately $US25–30 billion in digital ad revenue this year.
• The US and UK are helping to raise global averages, as the US accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total with a still-robust ad market, and the UK still growing at a remarkably fast pace (up +44 per cent since 2013).
• China is still more than two times the size of the third largest market, Japan, but macroeconomic concerns contribute to growth predictions of only +3.7 per cent in 2019 and 1.4 per cent in 2020.
• Additional key drivers in the advertising industry are the India and Brazil and, while Germany will remain the fifth largest market by 2024, France is set to be overtaken by India and Brazil.

The report also noted that, while global television ad revenue is estimated to decline by 3.6 per cent in 2019, the median growth rate was up 0.1 per cent and should be 1.8 per cent in 2020. This illustrates that there are many countries where TV advertising is still growing, especially as consumption using internet-connected devices continues to grow (accounting for nearly 15 per cent of TV-related activity and growing by about 30 per cent year-over-year).

Here’s how the report predicted the fortunes of the various medias up until 2024.