- WPP Media says the promoting market looks more resilient than previously anticipated because the industry manages disruptions stemming from tariffs and capitalizes on the substitute intelligence boom, in accordance with a blog post.
- The media-investment arm of WPP revised its full-year forecast upward, expecting global ad revenue will grow 8.8% to $1.14 trillion versus prior estimates of 6% growth. Momentum will extend into 2026, when ad revenue is projected to grow 7.1% during a yr that features the subsequent Winter Olympics and FIFA World Cup.
- WPP Media underlined channel shifts tied to ad-supported streaming, retail media, the creator economy and AI-powered search. The agency has introduced recent categories to its assessment as content stays the chief driver of investment while diversifying into recent areas.
WPP Media is in alignment with other forecasters which have seen the ad market less battered by aspects like tariffs than originally expected, resulting in upward revisions in macro spending expectations for 2025. The Trump administration’s signature economic policy has appeared to accentuate a dark consumer mood around the vacations, but brands are still pumping dollars into emergent channels like retail media and gaming to achieve shoppers who’re tightening their budgets and turning away from traditional media.
AI has continued to play a number one role as well, acting as each a magnet for investment and disruptor of myriad elements of marketing. AI is shaking up content creation, media planning, measurement and consumer interaction, in accordance with WPP Media, however the industry’s established integrations with machine learning have it well-positioned to tackle the ocean change. The agency recently swapped out its “search” category classification for “intelligence” as AI reshapes the digital economy. WPP Media’s parent company, WPP, goes all-in on AI as part of its turnaround strategy.
Content-driven promoting, a category that spans all the things from social media to traditional newspapers and magazines, makes up the most important portion of the worldwide market, commanding a 58% share of 2025 revenue at $663.5 billion. Within that category, gaming is the fastest-growing channel, on course to grow 29.5% to $8.5 billion in revenue this yr. That said, gaming still represents a sliver of the entire content bucket, or 0.7%.
Commerce, which encompasses the booming retail media segment, is projected by WPP Media to surpass traditional TV for the primary time in 2025 at $178.2 billion in global ad revenue. China is the most important region for commerce-related promoting, with 2025 revenues of $76.3 billion, followed by the U.S. at roughly $58 billion.
The report indicated that retail media could face greater pressure for consolidation coming down the pike and see some of its revenue cannibalized by AI. The retail media model for monetizing first-party data has also been adopted by other industries, leading WPP Media so as to add financial services media networks and travel media networks as recent categories to its evaluation.
WPP Media said 2026 will carry over some of this yr’s momentum, though total revenue growth can be nearly two percentage points lower despite the reoccurrence of high-profile cyclical events for brand sponsorship, including the World Cup and Olympics. Next yr can even feature a heated midterm season, however the agency excludes U.S. political ad spending from its top-level forecast.
Read the complete article here
