Get marketing news you'll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
In the immortal words of the Grateful Dead, the global ad market just keeps truckin’ on.
Global ad revenue is expected to grow 7.8% this year, totaling $989.8 billion, according to GroupM’s 2024 Global Midyear Forecast, a jump from the 5.3% it predicted in December.
Overall, GroupM expects ad industry revenue to surpass the trillion-dollar mark in 2025, a year earlier than it forecast in its December 2023 report.
That projected growth is largely driven by China’s economic recovery, along with falling inflation, the rapid growth of retail media and streaming platforms, and, of course, the omnipresence of AI, the report found.
Digital advertising is expected to make up about 70% of total ad industry revenue this year, or nearly $700 billion. (That figure excludes “digital extensions of traditional channels,” like streaming and CTV platforms, print, or OOH.) That figure is expected to grow to nearly 75%, or about $986 billion, in 2029.
US of A: US ad revenue (excluding political advertising) is expected to grow 5.8% and reach $365.9 billion this year. In fact, nearly every category of media is projected to grow this year, save for newspapers (-2.2%), magazines (-4.4%), and traditional television (-1.7%).
Hal 9000: Perhaps predictably, AI is expected to be nearly fully intertwined within the digital advertising economy by 2029, when GroupM expects that 94% of ad revenue will “be informed” by the technology.
That figure includes programmatic, search advertising, and use cases like preplanning and ad optimization, Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence at GroupM, said during a call with reporters.
“After doing this research, there may be no other industry right now where AI is used more pervasively,” she said.