Global Advertising Revenue Trends Amidst Domestic and Global Challenges
Despite the looming threats posed by U.S. tariffs, an impending economic recession, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, global advertising revenue exhibits remarkable resilience, projected to soar to $1.14 trillion by the year 2025. This surge is notably spearheaded by commerce media and social platforms.
According to WPP Media’s authoritative report, “This Year Next Year,” the advertising landscape is evolving into a labyrinthine domain characterized by transformative forces.
These include the proliferation of video streaming eroding the foundations of linear television, retail media siphoning away funds from traditional digital avenues, artificial intelligence-driven algorithms reshaping search paradigms, and creator-generated content further displacing its professionally produced counterparts.
Overall, advertising revenue is anticipated to experience an 8.8% growth, reaching a commendable $1.14 trillion in 2025, with further growth of 7.1% projected for 2026 (excluding the volatile realm of U.S. political advertising).
By 2026, the figure is expected to ascend to $1.22 trillion and potentially culminate in $1.55 trillion by 2030. This upward revision from earlier figures reflects diminished adverse impacts from tariffs and a notable boom in AI investments.
In the United Kingdom, advertising revenue is forecasted to increase by 8.0% to $58.4 billion in 2025, with an expectation of reaching $62.5 billion in 2026, marking a substantial 7% growth in the following year.
This positioning maintains the UK’s status as the foremost advertising market in Europe, accounting for nearly a quarter (24.2%) of the continent’s advertising expenditures.
A breakdown of specific channels reveals that television will garner $167.5 billion in 2025 and $171.1 billion in 2026. However, its share of global advertising revenue will see a decline from 15.8% in 2024 to 14.6% in 2025. Conversely, streaming services are set to escalate their portion of total TV revenue from 26.2% in 2025 to 29.6% in 2026.
The competitive landscape for television will focus significantly on sports rights, which are projected to play a pivotal role in advertising growth in the forthcoming years, with ad growth in the media and entertainment sector predicted to be 2.6% in 2025 and 6.3% in 2026.
Social media revenues are projected to reach $413 billion in 2025, reflecting a robust 12.8% increase, before advancing to $445.4 billion in 2026, supported by a 7.8% uptick. The channel’s share of total advertising revenue has expanded from 34.8% in 2024 to 36.1% in 2025, with expectations of hitting 36.4% by 2026.
Nonetheless, growth in ad revenues for social media platforms may experience a deceleration, influenced by the anticipated repercussions of age restrictions and an increasing shift towards utilizing AI chatbots.
In the realm of commerce media, which encompasses retail and vertical market media, projected revenues will constitute 15.6% of total global advertising income in 2025, amounting to $178.2 billion. This marks the first occasion that total TV ad revenue will be surpassed.
This revenue encompasses earnings from retail media, travel services (primarily involving Booking.com and Expedia), and financial services media networks (including entities like JPMorgan Chase, Klarna, AliPay, and PayPal).
Furthermore, travel media is poised for impressive growth, expanding by 22.9% in 2025 to reach $3.3 billion, with an expected growth rate of 9.2% to $3.6 billion in 2026. Meanwhile, financial services media networks are projected to achieve $699 million in 2025, surging by 25% to $873.8 million in 2026.
Looking more closely at the UK market, commerce media revenue is forecast to reach $12 billion by 2030, effectively doubling the revenue recorded in 2025.
By 2025, search advertising revenue is expected to total $244.9 billion, reflecting a 10.2% increase from the previous year, which will account for 21.4% of overall ad revenue.
Growth is anticipated to remain at 10.3% in 2026 before experiencing a gradual deceleration through 2030. This figure represents pure revenue from search engines, not accounting for sponsored listings on platforms like Amazon or TikTok.
When evaluating advertising expenditure across vertical search platforms such as Yelp, Reddit, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Amazon, the total spend is projected to approach $400 billion by 2026, with pureplay search comprising 59% of this figure (inclusive of 2.4% from AI Overview ad revenue and other generative engine search advertising).
Among this, commerce search is expected to constitute 34% of overall revenue, with social search contributing 4%.
Lastly, in the arena of out-of-home (OOH) advertising and cinema, OOH is predicted to reach $54.7 billion by 2025, reflecting a growth of 6.3% year-over-year.
By 2030, the global OOH market is anticipated to exceed $71.5 billion, with digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising representing nearly half of this total, attributed to the rapid scaling of programmatic DOOH across various markets. Cinema advertising is expected to grow by 5.5% to reach $2.2 billion in 2025.
Source link: Decisionmarketing.co.uk.
