WARC upgrades global ad spend forecast; India market seen rising to $13.8 bn in 2025

New Delhi: Global advertising spend is now on course to close out 2025 with growth of 8.9% to $1.19 trillion, an upgrade of 1.5 percentage points from WARC’s September forecast, driven by strong results from big tech platforms and a muted impact on global trade from trade tariffs, according to WARC’s latest outlook.

For India, WARC estimates ad spend will rise 4.6% in 2025 to $13.8 billion, before growth accelerates to 8.0% in 2026 and 9.7% in 2027.

WARC forecasts the global market will expand further to $1.30 trillion in 2026, up 9.1%, followed by 7.9% growth in 2027 to reach $1.40 trillion. WARC said this would represent a doubling in size since the pandemic.

The projections are part of WARC Media’s latest report, Global Ad Trends: Media’s New Normal, which argues the advertising market in 2025 is structurally different from the past, with incremental growth increasingly captured by large digital platforms.

Alex Brownsell, Head of Content, WARC Media, and author of the report, said advertising has “broken away from the economic cycle,” as digital-native categories add new money to the system and commerce shifts budgets towards measurable channels.

WARC said global ad spend continues to consolidate among three media owners. Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are forecast to take a combined market share of 56.1%, excluding China this year, equivalent to $556.6 billion, rising to 58.0% in 2026. 

WARC added that the trio is expected to absorb most incremental global ad spend between 2025 and 2027, taking their share excluding China to 58.8% by the end of the forecast period.

WARC noted that a handful of emerging online platforms, including TikTok and Reddit, are growing faster than incumbents but from a lower base. TikTok is projected to reach $45.2 billion in ad revenue by 2027, though WARC said this remains less than a fifth of Meta’s expected ad revenue by then. 

The report also noted that an executive order signed in September 2025 could reduce uncertainty around TikTok’s future in the US, which WARC called its largest market at around $12 billion this year.

The report argued that platform scale is reinforcing concentration, enabling higher investments in AI-driven optimisation, creative automation and first-party data infrastructure. It cited Meta reinvesting roughly 30% of quarterly earnings into research and development, supporting products such as Reels and Advantage+, while pointing to a similar “flywheel” at Amazon as its advertising and retail media businesses strengthen data signals.

WARC said these closed ecosystems are also affecting the open web. It noted that advertising spend on display formats has declined in recent years and that Google’s Display Network is set to record its third consecutive year of declining ad revenue in 2025, with the trend projected to continue over the next two years.

The report added that fee layers in advertising are shrinking, pushing more of each ad dollar towards large platforms, even when total spending is flat. It also pointed to lower creative costs due to wider availability of AI tools, tighter agency margins, and cheaper ad-tech services as contributors to Big Tech’s continued gains.

WARC said category growth is being powered by digital-native budgets and pricing power, with fast-growing sectors such as cross-border e-commerce channelling billions into search, social and retail media. It noted that retail media is approaching 14.7% of global ad spend, accelerating the shift to bottom-of-the-funnel channels.

Citing WARC’s Voice of the Marketer survey of 1,093 practitioners, the report said that among those expecting marketing budgets to grow next year, over half (51%) plan to increase investment in brand-building formats.

In its market overview, WARC said the US remains the largest advertising market, accounting for 35.3% of global ad spend, or $421.1 billion, with 8.9% growth expected in 2025. 

China is forecast to grow 6.9% to $200.1 billion this year, while the UK is valued at $58.1 billion with projected growth of 9.3% in 2025.

WARC said the top 10 ad markets are expected to account for about 70% of global advertising expenditure in 2025, with growth projected across the forecast period.