WARC: Alphabet, Amazon and Meta will control half of global ad market by 2023
Just three companies – Alphabet, Amazon and Meta – will be worth half of the global advertising market by 2023, according to WARC forecasts.
The tech giants now attract 46 cents in every dollar spent by advertisers, which has increased from 10 cents in 2013 and will control half of the advertising market by 2023.
WARC’s Global Advertising Trends: Where is the money going? report found global adspend has mostly bounced back from its pandemic-induced slump last year with a 23.8% rise to of $77.1bn in 2021.
The report found global adspend has mostly bounced back from its pandemic-induced slump last year with a 23.8% rise to a total of $77.1bn in 2021.
This investment is expected to further increase by 12.5% in 2022 and 8.3% in 2023 with ecommerce platforms leading this growth.
WARC also forecasted global advertising to be worth $1tn by 2025.
WARC predicted all product sectors to increase their ad investment on pre-pandemic levels and reported most sectors were able to fully recover from Covid-19 apart from travel and tourism which is still almost $2.9bn below pre-pandemic adspend levels despite an increase of $12.5bn in 2021.
As for where this investment is going, WARC also carried out a survey as part of its Marketer’s Toolkit 2022 which found just under two-thirds (66%) of 1,500 marketers said they were committing to increase ad budgets with Amazon and TikTok in the next year. Meanwhile, 61% said the same for YouTube, 60% for Instagram and 57% for Google.
James McDonald, director of data, intelligence and forecasting for WARC, said: “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.”
He added: “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.”