A study from WARC, specialists in marketing effectiveness, has found that global advertising spend is now on course to grow 7.4 per cent this year to $1.17 trillion (€1.45tn), a marked upgrade of 1.2 percentage points (pp) from WARC’s June forecast due to a strong second quarter performance. A further rise of 8.1 per cent is forecast next year, to $1.27 trillion, while growth of 7.1 per cent in 2027 would push the market’s value to $1.36 trillion – a doubling in size since the pandemic.

James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting, WARC, and author of the report, commented: “Global ad spend is growing rapidly, with digital-first platforms capturing almost all the new money. Despite economic headwinds, including disruption to global trade and reduced purchasing power among consumers, brands are doubling down on Meta, Alphabet and Amazon, while emerging players like TikTok are growing fast but from smaller bases. The global market is set to nearly double in value since the pandemic, underscoring the resilience of advertising in a tougher economic climate.”

WARC’s latest global projections are based on data aggregated from 100 markets worldwide, and leverage a proprietary neural network which projects advertising investment patterns based on over two million data points.

Ad spend continues to consolidate among three media owners

The latest forecast data shows that nine in ten incremental ad dollars this year are paid to advertise on online-only platforms. This means that legacy media owners – even those with online properties in their portfolios – are competing over the course of the year for the equivalent of what Facebook makes in an average month.

Of all new ad dollars entering the market this year, two in five are going to a social media platform, one in five is going towards search advertising, and one in five is being paid to retail media platforms.

The owners of the largest platforms in these sectors – Meta, Alphabet and Amazon– now attract over half (55.8 per cent) of total advertising spend outside of China, a share which is on track to top 60 per cent by 2030.

Social media ad spend is projected to rise 14.9 per cent this year to a total of $306.4 billion, equivalent to over a quarter (26.2 per cent) of all advertising spend in 2025. Further growth, of 12.8 per cent and 11.9 per cent, is forecast next year and into 2027, by when the social market is expected to be worth $386.9 billion – equal to 28.5 per cent of all ad spend.

Within this, Meta is expected to record growth of 14.8 per cent this year, with a total of $184.1 billion accounting for 60.1 per cent of all social media spend and 15.7 per cent of all ad spend worldwide. Meta’s share of the social market is expected to dip to 59.3 per cent by 2027, owing to continuing growth of TikTok over the forecast period 2025-2027, though its share of total ad spend will still rise to 16.9 per cent.

Instagram is still growing at a faster pace than the core Facebook platform, with growth averaging 16.4 per cent over the forecast period compared to an average rise of 10.4 per cent for Facebook.

TikTok continues to outpace both platforms, however, gaining market share in the process. Ad spend on TikTok is expected to average 21.6 per cent over the forecast period, drawing 11.7 per cent of all social media spend in 2027 (up from a share of 10.3 per cent this year).

Search advertising spend is set to rise by an anticipated 10 per cent this year to $253.2 billion – equivalent to a fifth (21.6 per cent) of all advertising spend. Google is the dominant player, with anticipated ad revenue of $217.8 billion equal to 86 per cent of the search market in 2025. This growth comes as the company faces a US antitrust hearing this week over a potential monopoly of the online ad market.

Advertising spend on retail media platforms is set to grow at an average rate of 12.6 per cent over the forecast period, though this is a marked slowdown from previous years. Retail media ad spend is on course to rise 13.7 per cent this year to a total of $175 billion – a 14.9 per cent share of global spend.

At an anticipated $62 billion 2025 (up 18.7 per cent year-on-year), Amazon accounts for over a third (35.4 per cent) of the retail media market and 5.3 per cent of all ad spend, though its share of both is rising.

Social windfall in the second quarter driven by retailers and tech brands in the lead up to ‘Freedom Day’

Pure play internet – encompassing social media, retail media, online display, online classified and paid search – grew 14 per cent in the second quarter of 2025 to $205.1 billion, equivalent to 71.9 per cent of all global ad spend. The growth rate exceeded the 9.9 per cent rise forecast owing to a windfall for social media companies ahead of incoming US trade tariffs.

The social media sector grew 20.2 per cent in Q2 2025 versus a forecast of 12.4 per cent, equivalent to $4.9 billion more than anticipated.

New monitoring from WARC and Nielsen sheds fresh light on spend within the social media sector. The newly developed dataset shows that a windfall in spend among retailers buoyed social media growth in the second quarter during the lead up to the introduction of new US trade tariffs on so called Freedom Day.

The enhanced monitoring shows that retail is the largest category on both Instagram and TikTok, with shares of approximately a quarter and a fifth, respectively. Retailers were seen to have increased spend on Instagram (+18.8 per cent) and TikTok (+56.8 per cent) at a much faster rate than on Facebook (+3.6 per cent) during the second quarter, perhaps indicative of a wider strategic shift.

Looking at the delta – the absolute difference in spend between Q2 2024 and Q2 2025 – retailers increased Instagram spend by $651 million – more than any other product category. The retail sector also recorded the highest delta on TikTok in Q2 2025, as spend rose by $661 million. Retailers accounted for a quarter (24.8 per cent) of TikTok’s growth during the second quarter of 2025.

Elsewhere, the technology & electronics sector increased spend on Facebook most during the second quarter, with a rise of 59.1 per cent equivalent to an additional $1.0bn. Tech brands also lifted spend markedly on Instagram (+$501 million) and TikTok (+$484 million) at this time, pushing their share of spend on these platforms to 7.6 per cent and 15. per cent, respectively. In both cases, this makes the tech category the second-largest on TikTok and Instagram, behind retail.

The Q2 windfall across the social media sector is the primary cause for our upgraded global ad forecast this year, the first upgrade to WARC’s outlook in more than 12 months.

The new normal: post-pandemic market dynamics

WARC’s forecasts show that, on the current trajectory, the nominal value of the global ad market will have doubled over the seven years since the pandemic. 

Real terms – i.e. inflation adjusted – data show that, among the 19 product sectors monitored by WARC, clothing brands are set to have increased spend most since the pandemic, with ad investment 2.4x higher by 2027. Travel & transport is also forecast to double spend by 2027, compared to a period when movement was heavily restricted across most of the globe. Nicotine is the only other sector to have more than doubled spend in that time, in line with the growing penetration of e-cigarettes and vapes around the world.

Conversely, spend within the financial services sector is tracking just 8.6 per cent higher in 2027 than in 2020, likely reflective of lacklustre economic performance and the demise of low-cost credit. Media & publishing is the only consumer-facing sector on course to record a decline since the pandemic, with real spend 14.3 per cent lower in 2027.

The same analysis at the media level shows that five channels have recorded a decline in ad spend since the pandemic when measured in real terms, including magazines (-49.9 per cent), newspapers (-45.8 per cent), broadcast TV (-35.2 per cent), online classified (-25.4 per cent) and broadcast radio (-17.7 per cent).

Although radio is set to record a dip, overall audio spend is likely to be up marginally (+11.4 per cent) come 2027, with online audio spend tracking 2.5x time higher. This is being driven by a trebling in podcast spend as listening habits changed over the period.

Despite VoD spend trebling over the period, total TV in 2027 is still expected to be down by 16.7 per cent in real terms compared to 2020, when production was heavily disrupted and has struggled to fully recover since. Conversely, real ad spend on YouTube is projected to be 85.4 per cent higher in 2027 versus 2020.

Overall, Alphabet’s real ad revenue is set to be up by two thirds (+66.6 per cent) over the period, while Meta’s is set to double (+99.2 per cent). Amazon’s retail platform is the stand-out performer, with real ad revenue in 2027 3x higher than in 2020, when enforced lockdowns drove shopping online.

Taken together, the Amazon, Alphabet and Meta triopoly is on track to record real growth of 89.1 per cent between the pandemic and the end of the forecast period, almost five times faster than all other media owners combined.

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Categories: Advertising, Articles, Markets, Research

Tags: advertising, Alphabet, facebook, meta, tiktok, warcc