New advertising spend forecasts for 100 markets worldwide show that the global ad market has largely weathered the impact of COVID-19, so far, and is on course to reach a value of $US1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) in 2025, with more than half of this money paid to just three companies: Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. This is according to WARC, the international marketing intelligence service, which publishes the findings as part of its new WARC Data Premium suite.
Following on from a meteoric 23.8 per cent rise to a total of $US771 billion ($A1086 billion) this year – the strongest growth in WARC’s four decades of market monitoring – advertising investment is forecast to rise by a further 12.5 per cent and 8.3 per cent in 2022 and 2023 respectively, with e-commerce platforms set to lead this growth.
The findings are accompanied by a proprietary survey recently carried out for WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2022, of 1500-plus marketing practitioners, which shows that two in three already committing budgets to Amazon are intending to increase that spend.
A full 66 per cent of advertising professionals are planning to up spend on TikTok next year, while YouTube (61 per cent of surveyed practitioners), Instagram (60per cnet) and Google (57 per cent) are also set to benefit from higher spend in 2022.
Currently though, WARC finds that all product sectors are projected to top pre-COVID investment next year, while most sectors were able to record a full recovery this year. Notable exceptions include transport & tourism, which led growth with an absolute increase of $US12.5 billion ($A17.6 billion) this year but is still almost $US2.9 billion ($A4.09 billion) down on pre-pandemic spending levels.
James McDonald, director of data, intelligence and forecasting, WARC said: “Despite potential headwinds, market data show that we are currently witnessing a boom in advertising trade like none seen before, led by increased demand for retail media and ancillary publishers such as Google and Instagram, which is now the world’s largest social platform. Our projections show that this trend is set to continue, with Alphabet, Meta and Amazon now on track to account for more than half of an advertising market worth $US1 tillion in 2025.
“New coronavirus variants – such as Omicron – may have a negative impact on our current outlook, and while our base scenario assumes that impact is muted, we will continue to review that position each quarter.”
