Ad spend in South Asia is growing rapidly (up 8.9 pc this year, 12.1 pc next year), buoyed by a strong Indian market, according to a new study by WARC ‘Global Ad Spend Outlook 2023/24: Withstanding Turbulence’.
It predicts the ad spend in India to grow by double digits over the next 18 months to reach US $13.7bn (Rs.1.13 lakh cr at current exchange rates) in 2024, accounting for 1.3 pc of global spend.
Global advertising spend is on course to grow 4.4 pc this year and a further 8.2 pc in 2024, by when expenditure will have topped $1 trn for the first time, the report says.
Global Growth Drivers
Five companies – Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Bytedance and Meta – now draw over half (50.7 pc) of global ad investment and are forecast to grow their share to 51.9 pc in 2024.
According to the report, social media will be the fastest growing medium, with spend rising to $227.2bn next year or over a fifth (21.8 pc) of total spend. Meta – owner of Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp – controls almost two-thirds (64.4 pc) of the social media market, with expected ad revenue of $146.3bn next year.
Retail Media will also be among the fastest-growing advertising channels over the forecast period with spend set to rise 10.2 pc this year and 10.5 pc next year to a total of $141.7bn – or 13.6 pc of all spend. Within this, Amazon is the dominant player with an expected share of 37.2% of all retail media spend equating to $52.7 bn next year, according to the reports.
Increased spend on CTV will not be enough to offset declining spend on Linear TV (-5.4 pc) this year, says the study, though political and sporting events set to boost linear TV spend by 3.5 pc in 2024. Linear TV is still the world’s third-largest advertising medium, with an expected share of 15.6 pc equating to advertiser spend of $163.0bn in 2024.
Search is on course to grow to a total of $229.2bn in 2024, equivalent to 22 pc of all advertising spend at that time. Google will remain the dominant player with an 83.1 pc share of the search market in 2024, up from 82.6 pc in 2023 and equal to $190.5bn in ad revenue.
Outdoor (+7.3 pc), Cinema (+5.2 pc), and Audio (+3.3 pc) are also set to see advertiser spend increase next year, though losses are expected among publishing media (-1.9 pc), including a 1.6 pc dip for newspapers and 2.5 pc fall for magazine brands.
The analysis, published on August 24, 2023, for the first time combines data from WARC’s proprietary survey of media owners, industry bodies, ad agencies and research organisations in 100 markets worldwide with advertising revenue data from 40 of the largest media owners.
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