Google, Meta, Amazon’s combined share of global ad revenues hits 51% in 2024: Magna

New Delhi: The winter update of MAGNA’s “Global Ad Forecast” published Monday, December 9 revealed that media owners’ ad revenues reached $933 billion in 2024, up +10%, in line with mid-year expectations.

The advertising revenues of traditional media owners (TMO)—from the cross-platform television, radio, publishing, out-of-home, and cinema media owners—grew by an estimated +4% to $274 billion—the best performance in 14 years (if we exclude the post-COVID recovery of 2021).

TMO ad sales were boosted by a record number of cyclical events (elections in the US, Mexico, and India, as well as the Summer Olympics, Football Euro, Copa America competitions) and a +12% growth in TMO’s non-linear ad sales (e.g., ad-supported streaming +18%) that now account for 25% of total TMO ad revenues.

The advertising sales of Digital Pure Players (DPP) (Search, Retail, Social, Short-Form Digital Video) increased by +13% to reach $659 billion, driven by Search/Commerce ad formats (+12%) Short-Form Video (+12%) and Social Media (+18%).

DPP ad sales were boosted by organic growth factors including competition in e-commerce (e.g., Temu and Shein now targeting European consumers), the rise of retail media networks ($144 billion), AI targeting and placement algorithms, and better monetisation of short vertical videos in social and video apps.

After a strong first half (global ad spend +12%), the ad market slowed in the second half (+8%). TMO ad sales slowed noticeably in Europe in the second half, while political advertising kept TMO growing in the US. DPP ad sales grew by double-digits through the year despite tougher comps in the second half.

Among the most dynamic ad markets this year: France and the US (both +12%), India and the UK (both +11%). Growth was more subdued in Japan and Canada (both +8%), China (+7%), Germany and Australia (both +6%). The US market remained the largest with $380 billion, ahead of China ($155bn).

CPG/FMCG, Government, Betting, and Finance were among the fastest-growing industry verticals in 2024, while Tech recovered, driven by “AI-Powered” marketing, and Travel slowed down. In 2025, MAGNA expects Auto, CPG and Tech to be dynamic, but Auto is vulnerable to trade and incentive policies.

As the “Big Three” digital media owners (Google, Meta, Amazon) outperformed market growth in 2024, with ad revenues growing by +11%, +22%, and +21% over 1Q-3Q resp., their combined market share grew to 51% of global ad revenues and 61% outside China.

Looking at 2025, the stabilisation of the European economy and the continued impact of organic growth drivers will keep the global ad market growing: MAGNA forecasts the global marketplace to grow by +6.1% to approach the trillion-dollar mark ($990 billion) (DPP: +9%, TMO: -2%) while the US market grows by +4.9% to flirt with the $400 billion milestone.

Market Overview: Organic and Cyclical Factors Combine to Generate Historically Strong Growth in 2024

The winter update of MAGNA’s “Global Ad Forecast” revealed that media owners’ net advertising revenues (NAR) reached $933 billion in 2024, growing +10.3% over 2023. This is in line with MAGNA’s mid-year prediction (+10.0%) and a significant acceleration on the global growth recorded in 2023 (+6.4%). +10.3% is the strongest growth rate observed by MAGNA in 25 years (excluding the post-COVID surge in 2021 of +23%).

Why such strong growth in a rather lukewarm economic climate?

The exceptional number of cyclical events (including elections in India, Mexico and the US, Paris Olympics, UEFA Euro 2024, Copa América hosted by the US) was a factor, but MAGNA believes that excluding the incremental ad sales generated by these events, the market would still have grown by +9.0%. The other—and main—growth factor is therefore to be found in organic market drivers in four categories:

Commerce/Retail media Drives Digital Media Spending

As more and more product categories shift from in-store towards e-commerce, brands have adjusted their marketing efforts accordingly. CPG/FMCG brands can reallocate some of the amount negotiated with major retailers in trade marketing agreements from in-store channels towards the digital ad formats offered by retail media networks. This allows brands to grow digital ad spend significantly without having to increase total marketing budgets, or having to cannibalise lower funnel budgets spent on traditional media, although some brands do that too.

Ad-supported Streaming Boosts Long-Form Video

All traditional media owners (publishers, radio, and television broadcasters) are developing non-linear ad sales successfully. The most spectacular progress in 2024 came from ad-supported streaming. The penetration, usage and ad sales of both TMO-owned platforms (e.g., Peacock by NBC, Joyn by ProSiebenSat.1, ITX, and TF1+), and pure-players (Netflix, Prime Video) grew dramatically in 2024. The proportion of users subscribing to an ad-supported tier grew everywhere. In the US, it grew from 5% to 17% for Netflix, from 10% to 30% for Disney+, and from 0% to 80% for Prime Video as Amazon introduced advertising as its default tier in 10+ key markets in 2024 (US, UK, France, Germany etc.). 

With more scale, in addition to addressability and brand safety, ad-supported streaming is increasingly attractive to brands. Many brands and agencies are thus reallocating ad budgets from linear TV – where impressions continue to erode by -5% to -10% per year across markets and demographics—to the streaming offerings of their media partners. MAGNA believes it’s a zero-sum game, and cross-platform premium long-form television, which includes television and long-form streaming, is more attractive overall against the competition of other media formats.

Artificial Intelligence. AI is organically driving the advertising markets in two ways. Directly: all Tech companies are now launching and promoting “AI-Powered” services and products to a wide audience, which increases their overall ad budgets. Indirectly: AI is being used in the ad tech ecosystem to optimize creative costs, dynamic versioning, and programmatic effectiveness, thus improving the return on investment for brands.

E-commerce Competition Surge

Several new DTC brands – often coming from Asia, like Temu and Shein – are aggressively challenging traditional brands (e.g., clothing brands) and established e-commerce platforms like Amazon. This is mostly a driver for digital advertising (Search and Social formats in particular) but these brands are also using traditional media and TV campaigns.

There was one additional driver in 2024 that will not apply again in 2025

The strong improvement in the monetisation of short vertical videos—which have become a dominant usage on video and social apps since mid-2023—contributed to strong growth for Instagram and YouTube in 2024. We are not saying that digital monetisation will deteriorate in 2025, but now that this new ad format is well established and monetised, the average revenue per ad view is unlikely to increase again at a similar rate.

The economic environment is expected to remain robust in 2025. According to the IMF WEO update of October 2024, global output (real GDP growth) will remain at +3.2%, i.e., the same rate as in 2024 and the same rate that was expected in the April update (which was the basis of our summer forecast). The outlook is a bit brighter, however, for European markets that crawled between 0% and +1% in 2024. Germany, for instance, is expected to grow by +0.8% after stagnating in 2024, and the UK is expected to accelerate from +1.1% to +1.5%. Another good sign for marketing activity is the confirmed slowdown of consumer inflation. Lower energy costs and high interest rates successfully reduced inflation in nearly all advanced economies. From +7% to +10% in 2022-2023, consumer price inflation has now slowed to +2% to +3% in Europe and North America. The IMF is expecting CPI inflation to slow down further, to +2% or less in most mature markets, which is a positive signal for marketers and consumers. Of course, one must remain aware of two risks to this economic stability scenario: a further deterioration of geopolitical tensions that could cause another energy crisis and a revival of trade tensions caused by a rise in tariffs.

At least three of the four organic drivers mentioned for 2024 will still move the market in 2025, although driver #4 may not be quite as strong. That is why, even without macroeconomic acceleration, MAGNA expects non-cyclical ad growth to remain in the high single digits in 2025: from +9.0% in 2024 to +7.4% in 2025. Factoring in the (lack of) major cyclical events, actual media owners’ ad revenues will grow by just +6.1%, but that should be enough to flirt with the trillion-dollar mark ($990 billion).

Media: TMO Resilience and DPP Expansion

After a strong first half (+12%), the global ad market slowed slightly in the second half (+8%). Traditional Media Owners (TMO) ad sales slowed noticeably in Europe in the second half, while political advertising kept TMO growing in the US. Digital Pure Players (DPP) ad sales grew by double-digits through the year despite tougher comps in the second half.

On a full-year basis, the +10.3% growth of 2024 for all media owners was the result of TMO ad revenues growing by +4.0% to $274 billion (29.4% of global ad sales) while DPP ad sales reached +13.1%.

The +4% growth for TMO in 2024 was the best performance in 14 years (if we exclude the post-COVID recovery of 2021). TMO ad sales were driven by a record number of cyclical events (elections in Mexico, South Africa, India and the US, Summer Olympics, Football Euro, Copa America) and a +12% growth in TMO’s non-linear ad sales (e.g., ad-supported streaming +18%) that now account for 25% of total TMO ad revenues. With a lack of cyclical events in 2025 MAGNA forecasts TMO’s non-cyclical ad sales to shrink by -1.8%

Cross-platform television grew by an estimated +5% to $163 billion. Non-linear ad sales grew +18% driven by ad-supported streaming. TV benefited the most from the cyclical drivers of 2024, with six billion dollars of incremental ad revenues from political advertising for local television in the US, and one billion around the Olympic games for national TV. Excluding the impact of cyclical events, global TV advertising would have been flat in 2024. Non-cyclical cross-platform TV ad sales will shrink by -1.8% in 2025 but keeping in the cyclical factor, actual ad revenues will decrease by -4.2%.

Publishing ad revenues decreased by -3% in 2024, to $44 billion despite the growth of digital ad sales, as Magazine brands fared worse than newspapers. MAGNA forecasts publishers’ ad sales to decline by -2% in 2025. Audio Media ad revenues grew by +2% to $29 billion in 2024 as many advertisers found the media less busy and costly than television, and digital audio (e.g., podcasting) continued to grow in popularity. MAGNA expects ad revenues to be stable in 2025.

OOH was once again the most dynamic of the traditional media formats, growing by +10% to $36.2 billion. OOH now captures 13% of total TMO ad sales, compared to 11% in 2019 and just 6% in 1999. OOH benefitted from major sports events, as local and global brands were keen to reach sports fans visiting Germany or France in the summer. The growing inventory of digital ad units is driving DOOH ad revenue (+18%) and attracting programmatic budgets to OOH, which now accounts for approx. 15% of DOOH spending. MAGNA forecasts +7% growth for OOH in 2025. Finally, cinema advertising was stable at $1.8 billion (+1%) due to disappointing attendance and fewer-than-usual blockbuster releases following the Hollywood strikes in 2023. Cinema advertising remains 40% smaller than pre-COVID.

The advertising sales of Digital Pure Players (DPP) (Search, Retail, Social, Short-Form Digital Video) increased by +13% to reach $659 billion, driven by Search/Commerce ad formats (+12%) Short-Form Video (+12%) and Social Media (+18%). DPP ad sales were boosted by organic growth factors including competition in ecommerce (e.g., Temu and Shein now targeting European consumers), the rise of retail media networks ($144 billion), and better monetization of short vertical videos in social and video apps. In 2025, MAGNA expects DPP to grow by +9.4% to $721bn driven by Core Search (+6%) Retail Search (+13%), Digital Video (+7%), and Social Media (+13%).

Markets: US, UK, India, and France Among the Most Dynamic

Among the most dynamic ad markets in 2024: France and the US (both +12%), India and the UK (both +11%), and Brazil (+14%). Nominal growth was much higher in a few emerging markets hit by high inflation: Argentina (+260% in local currency), Turkey (+70%), Ukraine (+26%) and Egypt (+33%). Growth was more subdued in Japan and Canada (both +8%), China (+7%), Germany and Australia (both +6%). The US ad market remains the largest by far with $380 billion this year, ahead of China ($155bn), and the UK ($54bn).

Media Owners: The Big Three Outperform Again

The advertising revenues of the three largest advertising vendors in the world (Google, Meta, Amazon) reaccelerated in 2023-2024 after stagnating between mid-2022 and mid-2023. Since mid-2023 and throughout 2024 Meta and YouTube have benefitted from better monetisation of the fast-growing short vertical video formats, while Amazon benefitted from CPG brands increasing lower-funnel and online marketing budgets as e-commerce sales (historically lagging in CPG) grew. Google, Meta, and Amazon reported 1Q-3Q advertising revenues up +11%, +22% and +21% respectively. As they outperformed market growth, the Big Three increased their combined market share; they now account for 51% of total advertising sales globally, and 61% of ad sales outside China.