The global advertising market grew by 8.9% last year to a total of US$ 1.19 trillion. The largest share of this amount went to tech giants – Alphabet, Amazon and Meta together have a 56.1% market share excluding the Chinese market, which corresponds to 556.6 billion US dollars. This is according to a study by Warc.
Tech giants take a bigger slice of every dollar spent on advertising
This year, the global advertising market is expected to grow again, by 9.1% to a total of $1.3 trillion, with the aforementioned players accounting for 58% of the market. Next year, the market is expected to reach $1.4 trillion, double the 2020 figure during the pandemic.
"Advertising has broken away from the economic cycle and is behaving in a way that does not reflect the real economy," comments Alex Brownsell of Warc, adding that most of the new money is going to technology companies.
Most advertising revenue goes to the aforementioned trio – Alphabet, the company behind Google and YouTube; Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; and Amazon. TikTok is also growing rapidly and is expected to generate $45.2 billion in advertising revenue by 2027, which is still less than a fifth of Meta's expected advertising revenue.
High advertising revenues allow tech players to further invest in development and optimisation based on artificial intelligence, automation and data infrastructure. Meta, for example , reinvests about 30% of its quarterly profits into developing products such as Reels and Advantage, which attract even more advertisers.
Tech giants are taking an increasingly larger share of every dollar invested in advertising, even as overall spending stagnates. Advertising agencies have lower margins, and thanks to the wider availability of artificial intelligence tools, creative costs are lower and advertising technology services are also becoming cheaper.
Cross-border e-commerce is investing in advertising
New money is flowing into advertising, particularly from international e-commerce companies, which are investing in search, social media and retail media in their efforts to reach foreign customers.
Almost 14.7% of global advertising expenditure goes to retail media alone. For example, in the clothing and accessories segment, more than 80% of expenditure flows into retail media, paid search and social platforms. Similarly, investments in the technology and electronics segment are also shifting to the online environment.
European markets should maintain growth in advertising expenditure
Most of the total advertising expenditure (70.4%) is generated by the ten largest advertising markets in the world. The United States remains in first place, accounting for 35.3%, or a total of $421.1 billion. China is in second place with a 16.8% share, representing $200.1 billion. The third largest market is the United Kingdom ($58.1 billion).
European markets such as Germany (9.3% to $34.4 billion in 2025, 8.3% in 2026, 4.7% in 2027), France (8.9% to $21.9 billion in 2025, 7.2% in 2026, 4.3% in 2027), Italy (7.4% to $12.4 billion in 2025, 6.8% in 2026, 4.1% in 2027) and Spain (9.8% to $10.7 billion in 2025, 8.7% in 2026, 5.4% in 2027) are likely to maintain their growth throughout the forecast period.
Source: mediaguru.cz