GroupM downgrades projections for global ad growth

GroupM, WPP’s investment arm, has revised its forecasts for global advertising growth as digital shows signs of deceleration.

According to the agency group’s worldwide media forecast, the global ad industry can now expect a 3.4% growth in expenditure in 2019, a downgrade of 0.2% compared to its previous prediction in December.

In 2020 expenditure is expected to grow 4.7% on an underlying basis – a slight acceleration – rising to 6.0% when including political advertising.

Although digital continues to dominate across all markets and will account for 50% of the world’s ad spending in 2020, GroupM has said that its growth will now likely decelerate each year and eventually converge with global averages.

“While the economic foundations supporting the advertising industry are somewhat fragile at this time, growth trends are holding up for now,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence, GroupM.

Meanwhile, growth in TV advertising has “essentially flattened” and is forecast to fall -3% in 2019, before recovering by 1.5% in 2020.

Newspapers are to continue in decline through 2019 and 2020, down -9.3% and -5.8%, respectively – amounting to just 6% of the world’s total advertising.

However, despite uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the UK continues to be a key driver of global expenditure growth. Full forecasts for the UK were released by GroupM earlier this month.