The course of global ad markets after pandemic

The global ad market increased 23.6% to USD 157.6 billion in the second quarter – a new high for a second quarter period. The global market has rebounded strongly from the pandemic downturn last year, according to quarterly investment forecasts in marketing firm WARC Data’s latest trend report.

In the first quarter growth was 12.5% growth so consequently, global ad investment was 17.8% higher during the first six months of the year than during the same period in 2020.

WARC says this puts the market on course for 12.6% growth during 2021, almost double the 6.7% initially projected. Further growth, of 8.2%, is forecast for 2022, by when the global advertising market will be worth more than USD 700 billion.

• 2020 spend on offline media such as print, radio, TV and cinema fell by a fifth, or USD 63 billion – the worst downturn for this sector in WARC’s 40 years of market monitoring.
• Spend online was up by 9.4% (USD 29.2 billion) last year, buoyed by rising e-commerce (+27.4%), social media (+18.3%) and online video (+15.9%) investment.
• Online media gained ten percentage points in budget allocation last year in the automotive and financial categories, a rate of increase that was double the pre-pandemic average.
• Spend on e-commerce advertising is projected to rise 35.2% this year, mostly to the benefit of Amazon. Brand spend on search – where Google is the largest player – is set to rise by over a quarter (26.2%) this year, while online video spend is expected to be up by 17.7% and social media by 13.1% this year.