Meta, Alphabet, Amazon to dominate as global ad spends in 2025 rises 7.4%: Report

The global advertising market is projected to grow by 7.4% in 2025, reaching $1.17 trillion, according to WARC’s Global Ad Forecast Q3 2025. The forecast marks a 1.2 percentage point upgrade from WARC’s June projection and is the first upward revision in over a year.

While growth is lower than the 10.9% increase recorded in 2024, which was boosted by major sporting and political events, it exceeds the rates seen in 2023 (+6.3%) and 2022 (+4.6%).

Digital platforms continue to dominate, accounting for nearly all incremental ad spend this year. Social media alone is expected to absorb two in five new ad dollars, with expenditure projected to rise 14.9% to $306.4 billion, representing 26.2% of total global ad spend.ad spend

Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon are forecast to capture almost two-thirds of all ad growth in 2025, with Meta alone taking 60% of social media advertising spend. Search advertising is expected to attract around 22% of new ad dollars, while retail media platforms take 21.5%.

Looking ahead, global ad spend is projected to accelerate to 8.1% growth in 2026, totaling $1.27 trillion. Outside China, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon currently account for 55.8% of total advertising spend, a figure expected to exceed 60% by 2030.

James McDonald, Director of Data, Intelligence & Forecasting at WARC, said, “The global market is set to nearly double in value since the pandemic, underscoring the resilience of advertising in a tougher economic climate.” He added that brands continue to invest heavily in major digital platforms, while emerging players like TikTok are growing rapidly from smaller bases.

WARC’s projections are based on data from 100 markets worldwide, using a proprietary neural network that analyses over two million data points to forecast advertising investment patterns.