A new report by WPP-owned GroupM has confirmed exactly why rival Omnicom is lining up a $30bn-plus mega merger with IPG, revealing that most of this year’s growth will directly benefit the largest sellers of digital advertising rather than providers of marketing services, with some gains also attributable to smaller players in emerging sectors.
According to the 2024 This Year, Next Year Report, the top five digital advertising companies (Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon and Alibaba) are expected to earn more than half of all ad revenue in 2024, most of which will be received directly from small to medium sized advertisers via their advertising platforms or from large advertisers purchasing directly, including cross-border advertisers.
The report shows that the continued growth of advertising, driven by all its digital forms, has defied expectations of a slowdown, accelerating once again in 2024 and is on course to maintain a faster rate of growth through to 2029 than GroupM predicted at this time last year.
Global advertising revenue is forecast to increase 9.5% in 2024, an upward revision from GroupM’s June estimate of 7.8%. The advertising industry will also surpass, for the first time, $1 trillion in total revenue this year and climb 7.7% in 2025 to $1.1 trillion.
Pure-play digital advertising will account for 72.9% of total revenue in 2025, or 81.7% if all digital extensions of traditional advertising, such as streaming TV, digital out-of-home (DOOH) and digital newspaper and magazine revenue are included.
These figures exclude US political advertising due to its large skewing effect on both US and global data. In 2024, US political ad revenue added $15.1bn to the total – over 30% more than in the 2020 presidential election year. Accounting for political ad revenue, the forecast for 2024 global growth is 10.7%, decelerating to 6.4% growth in 2025.
Pure-play digital advertising is forecast to grow 12.4% globally in 2024 and 10.0% in 2025. It is the largest segment of advertising revenue globally. It will account for 72.9% of total advertising in 2025 and 76.8% in 2029.
Search as it is currently defined (primarily Google, Baidu, Bing, and Naver) will grow 10.1% in 2024 and 7.8% in 2025.
But the largest category of pureplay digital revenue, including social media and online video platforms like TikTok and Red (and most of YouTube), is forecast to grow 12.9% in 2024.
Meanwhile, global retail media increased 18.2% in 2024 and is expected to add 9.1% a year on a compound basis through 2029. Revenue for 2025 is expected to reach $176.9bn, surpassing total TV revenue (including streaming) for the first time and representing 15.9% of total advertising.
Global TV (including both linear and streaming, but not political revenue) will also grow but by just 2.4% on a compound basis from 2024 to 2029, significantly slower than total advertising growth of 6.4%.
Linear TV will account for 72.6% of that, with 2025 revenue down 3.4% compared to 2024. Streaming TV, by contrast, is forecast to grow 19.3% in 2025, but will still only represent 37.5% of total TV revenue by 2029.
Out of home (OOH) will grow 7.1% in 2025 and is forecast to account for 5% of total ad revenue in 2025. In 2025, the report estimates that DOOH will account for 42% of total OOH revenue, more than the penetration of TV (27%) or audio (31%).
Next up, global audio revenue will remain roughly flat in 2025, growing just 0.3% to $27.0bn in 2025 and then notching slight declines for each of the next four years. Streaming audio will record double-digit growth in 2024 and is expecting 4.4% growth on a compound annual basis through 2029.
In addition, cinema advertising is forecast to grow 5.2% in 2024 and a further 5.9% in 2029, although the $2.3bn total will still fall short of 2019’s $3.0 billion global figure.
However, total “print” advertising revenue, inclusive of all traditional and digital formats across both newspapers and magazines, will decline 4.5% in 2024 and a further 3.0% in 2025.
When it comes to the UK market, in particular, GroupM is forcasting the sector will experience significant growth in 2024, reaching $53.2bn, an increase of 8.3% relative to last year. This solidifies the UK’s position as Europe’s largest advertising market, surpassing projected growth for the region as a whole.
Relative to its mid-year 2024 forecasts, GroupM nows expect a better recovery in 2025 and has therefore upgraded the UK’s advertising growth from 4.4% to 7.0%.
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