Dive Brief:
- WPP Media says the advertising market looks more resilient than previously anticipated as the industry manages disruptions stemming from tariffs and capitalizes on the artificial intelligence boom, according to 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 year that includes the next 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 new categories to its assessment as content remains the chief driver of investment while diversifying into new areas.
Dive Insight:
WPP Media is in alignment with other forecasters that have seen the ad market less battered by factors like tariffs than originally expected, leading to upward revisions in macro spending expectations for 2025. The Trump administration’s signature economic policy has appeared to intensify a gloomy consumer mood around the holidays, but brands are still pumping dollars into emergent channels like retail media and gaming to reach shoppers who are tightening their budgets and turning away from traditional media.
AI has continued to play a leading role as well, acting as both a magnet for investment and disruptor of myriad aspects of marketing. AI is shaking up content creation, media planning, measurement and consumer interaction, according to WPP Media, but the industry’s established integrations with machine learning have it well-positioned to tackle the sea change. The agency recently swapped out its “search” category classification for “intelligence” as AI reshapes the digital economy. WPP Media’s parent company, WPP, is going all-in on AI as part of its turnaround strategy.
Content-driven advertising, a category that spans everything from social media to traditional newspapers and magazines, makes up the largest portion of the global market, commanding a 58% share of 2025 revenue at $663.5 billion. Within that category, gaming is the fastest-growing channel, on track to grow 29.5% to $8.5 billion in revenue this year. That said, gaming still represents a sliver of the total content bucket, or 0.7%.
Commerce, which encompasses the booming retail media segment, is projected by WPP Media to surpass traditional TV for the first time in 2025 at $178.2 billion in global ad revenue. China is the largest region for commerce-related advertising, 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 to add financial services media networks and travel media networks as new categories to its analysis.
WPP Media said 2026 will carry over some of this year’s momentum, though total revenue growth will be nearly two percentage points lower despite the recurrence of high-profile cyclical events for brand sponsorship, including the World Cup and Olympics. Next year will also feature a heated midterm season, but the agency excludes U.S. political ad spending from its top-level forecast.
