Real global advertising spend will likely only rise by 2.5% next year

The latest Dentsu ‘Global Ad Spend Forecasts’ cover 58 markets and was released this week. 

Digital is also expected to follow an upward trajectory and should reach $443-billion in 2024, representing 58.8% of total global advertising spend. 

The slowdown to single-digit growth first observed in 2023 (6.3%) is forecast to continue in 2024 (6.5%) and to become the norm over the next few years. Yet, digital is expected to continue to be the main driver of global ad spend growth and capture the most incremental ad dollar investments, with an additional $27.1-billion spend next year.

Dentsu says that, in 2024, significant media opportunities arise for advertisers from major cyclical sporting and political events. These include the Euro 2024 soccer finals and the US presidential election, which will both drive increased investments at a market and international level.

Events help to push advertising spending 

“Despite the current worldwide geo-political instabilities and economic outlook, in 2024 we can see how significant major political and sporting events are for creating positive growth in ad spend,” says Will Swayne, Dentsu’s Global Practice President – Media.

“But overall spend is just one of the metrics we need to consider. So, for the first time, we have conducted a deep-dive analysis into market GDP and population as new alternative ad spend benchmarks for our clients.”

This analysis indicates advertising spend will represent, on average, 0.75% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the countries tracked, which is consistent with the average annual ad spend/GDP indicator observed in the last 20 years (0.70%).

Some markets do contribute considerably more, however. For example, advertisers in Japan (1.26%), the United Kingdom (1.23%) and the United States (1.13%) spend much more than those in other markets relative to their GDP.

You can download the Dentsu ‘Global Ad Spend Forecasts’ here.