The projected 10.5% rise in spend this year is a 2.3 percentage point upgrade to WARC’s prior forecast and reflects ongoing artificial intelligence hype.

Dive Brief: 
Global advertising spend is expected to increase 10.5% this year to a total of $1.07 trillion, according to WARC’s latest forecast. The updated projection represents a 2.3 percentage point increase over the firm’s last forecast and reflects the uptake of media tools enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI).  
Spending in North America will grow 8.6% to $348 billion, and Europe will increase 5% to $165 billion. Latin America will increase 6.2% to $32.1 billion, and the Middle East will grow 4.2% to 12.6 billion. Asia Pacific will remain the world’s second-largest market at $272 billion with 2% growth. 
Meta, Amazon and Alphabet will attract nearly 44% of all ad spending this year, and the companies’ share is expected to grow to more than 46% over the next three years.  
 
Dive Insight: 
With a U.S. presidential election and Summer Olympics this year, it should be of little surprise that 2024 will be a record year for ad spend. But WARC’s outlook for the next two years is just as rosy, with spending anticipated to increase 7.2% in 2025 and 7% in 2026, culminating in a global ad market worth $1.23 trillion. According to WARC, global ad investment has more than doubled over the last decade and has grown 2.8 times faster than economic output since 2014.  

What’s more, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet account for more than 70% of that incremental spend, demonstrating how dominant digital channels have become. Social media accounts for nearly $242 billion of spending this year and is the largest single advertising channel. Social accounts for 22.6% of all global ad spending in 2024, and it is forecast to rise a full percentage point by 2026.  

Within social, Meta commands nearly 63% of the market, though its share is dropping, notably to TikTok-owner ByteDance, which now draws a fifth of all social advertising spending (up from just 9% five years ago). Social media is benefiting from the adoption of AI throughout the industry, with more than half of AI-enabled spending, defined as involving some form of recommendation algorithm, natural language processing or search optimization, occurring in the social media sector.  

Search, excluding retail media, accounts for nearly 22% of advertising spending, totaling nearly $224 billion. Google accounts for more than 84% of the global search market (and over 90% when China is excluded). Such dominance can help explain why Google was recently found to be in violation of U.S. antitrust laws. 

Search spending, however, is expected to plateau in the coming years as retail media gains more traction. Retail media is expected to account for just slightly more than 14% of overall spending in 2024 ($153 billion) and the channel is expected to see the fastest growth over the next three years. In 2024, Amazon is dominating the channel with expectations of nearly $56 billion in ad spending, equivalent to more than a third of all retail media spending.  

With the introduction of more ad-supported options, connected TV is also growing rapidly. The CTV channel is on course to be worth $35 billion to advertisers this year. Further, the channel’s growth is set to account for two-thirds of all growth in the video (linear and CTV) market this year, and all growth in 2025.  

Legacy media (print, broadcast radio, linear TV, cinema and out-of-home) now only account for a quarter of total advertising spending, about $271 billion this year. The figure represents a 1.5% rise over 2023 and is largely attributable to U.S. political spending.  

In other categories, retail, the largest category monitored by WARC, is expected to drop 2.5% in global spending, while technology and electronics is expected to grow more than 13%. Other strong growth categories include alcoholic drinks (12%), clothing and accessories (11%) and business and industrial (18%).  

Geographically, North America will be the fastest-growing region, led by the U.S presidential elections, with ad spending rising 8.6% to a total of $347.5 billion. Latin America is expected to grow 6% to $32 billion based on Brazil’s currency growth and significant online advertising investment. China’s expected 6.4% growth and India’s nearly 12% growth will offset falling Yen currency prices to help Asia Pacific maintain 2% growth for the year.

Advertising across Europe will rise 5% to $165 billion in 2024. Brand spending in the Middle East and Africa is on course to rise 4% to 12.6 billion this year, with mixed fortunes in Africa and uncertainty over conflict in the Middle East tempering growth expectations. 

WARC’s analysis is based on advertising spend data from 100 markets worldwide and projections of advertising investment patterns based on over two million data points.