WARC Raises Global Ad Forecast As U.S. Market Drives Growth.

Global advertising spending is expected to rise 8.9% this year to $1.19 trillion, according to a new WARC Media report that points to stronger-than-expected results from major technology platforms and limited disruption from recent trade tariffs.

The upgrade, released in WARC’s Global Ad Trends: Media’s New Normal report, raises the organization’s September outlook by 1.5 percentage points. WARC now projects global ad spending will grow 9.1% next year to $1.3 trillion and a further 7.9% in 2027, when worldwide spending is expected to reach $1.4 trillion, roughly double the level recorded in 2020.

The report finds that the advertising landscape has shifted dramatically since the pandemic. “Advertising has broken away from the economic cycle and behaves in a way that doesn’t feel reflective of the real economy,” said Alex Brownsell, Head of Content at WARC Media and the report’s author. “New money has arrived from digital-native categories, while commerce has redrawn the measured media map, and Big Tech’s self-reinforcing flywheel is harvesting almost all incremental dollars.” The projections are built on data from 100 markets and rely on a proprietary neural network model that evaluates more than 2 million data points.

Much of the industry’s expansion continues to be concentrated among three companies: Alphabet, Meta and Amazon. These firms are expected to take a combined 56.1% of global advertising spend this year when China is excluded, equal to $556.6 billion. Their share is forecast to reach 58% in 2026 and 58.8% by 2027. While emerging platforms such as TikTok and Reddit are gaining ground at a faster pace, they remain far smaller. TikTok’s U.S. business — its largest market, at roughly $12 billion this year — faces fewer uncertainties following a September executive order intended to clarify its operating future.

The report attributes the concentration of growth to the scale and reinvestment strategies of dominant platforms. Meta reinvests about 30% of its quarterly earnings into research and development, which helps fuel products such as Reels and Advantage+.

Amazon’s expanding advertising and retail media business continues to strengthen the company’s data signals and margins. Growth in these closed ecosystems has coincided with declines in open-web display advertising; Google’s Display Network is expected to log a third straight year of revenue contraction in 2025, a trend WARC says will continue. Lower creative costs driven by AI tools, shrinking agency margins and cheaper ad-tech services are also allowing more ad dollars to flow directly to large platforms.

WARC notes that digital-native brands and performance-focused sectors are pushing ad spending ahead of consumer demand. Fast-growing categories, particularly e-commerce, are directing billions into search, social and retail media. Retail media now accounts for nearly 14.7% of global ad spending as trade marketing budgets move into measurable digital channels. Despite sluggish wage growth and persistent inflation pressures, many large advertisers are leaning more heavily into brand-building; a WARC survey of 1,093 marketers found that 51% of those with growing budgets plan to increase brand investment next year. In categories such as clothing and accessories, more than 80% of spending now goes to retail media, paid search and social platforms.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest advertising market, representing 35.3% of global spending. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend $421.1 billion this year, an 8.9% increase. Growth is forecast to continue at 7% next year, supported by the men’s FIFA World Cup and U.S. midterm elections, and at 6.4% in 2027, when the market is projected to reach $479.4 billion. The top 10 ad markets, led by the U.S., are expected to account for roughly 70% of global spending this year.