WARC: Record Ad Market Growth for 2021

New forecasts from WARC project that the global ad market will hit $771 billion this year, a 23.8 percent rise, with a 12.5 percent gain predicted for 2022.

Per WARC, the global ad market will hit $1 trillion by 2025—and more than half of that will go to Alphabet, Meta and Amazon.

“Despite potential headwinds, market data show that we are currently witnessing a boom in advertising trade like none seen before, led by increased demand for retail media and ancillary publishers such as Google and Instagram, which is now the world’s largest social platform,” said James McDonald, director of data, intelligence and forecasting at WARC. “New coronavirus variants—such as Omicron—may have a negative impact on our current outlook, and while our base scenario assumes that impact is muted, we will continue to review that position each quarter.”

OTT video platforms were worth $63.6 billion to advertisers this year, a 41.6 percent gain. In 2022, WARC predicts a 19.7 percent increase, followed by a 14.2 percent hike in 2023. Television was up 5.5 percent this year, with a 3.3 percent increase predicted for 2022 to reach $184.7 billion. Linear TV is set to remain larger than OTT for the duration of the forecast period, though its share of global ad spend will dip.