The global advertising industry is ending the week on a cautiously upbeat note, powered by artificial intelligence, streaming, and retail media, but facing mounting pressure on traditional channels and regulation.

WPP Media’s new end of year forecast, released in the past 48 hours, raises its 2025 global ad growth outlook to about 8.8 percent year on year, excluding US political advertising, citing strong demand for AI powered targeting, automation, and measurement tools.[1][4] Content driven advertising is now expected to reach 663.5 billion dollars in 2025, up 7.9 percent from 2024 and accounting for roughly 58 percent of global ad revenue, before easing slightly over the rest of the decade.[4] Streaming and social are the primary engines, with social and digital content spend projected at 413 billion dollars in 2025, up 12.8 percent.[4]

At the same time, linear television continues to decline structurally. WPP projects linear TV ad spend will fall 3.8 percent to 123.5 billion dollars in 2025, with another 2.6 percent drop in 2026, while global streaming TV advertising is set to grow more than 15 percent in both 2025 and 2026.[4] Gaming and commerce media remain standout growth segments: in game advertising is forecast to surge almost 30 percent to 8.5 billion dollars in 2025, while commerce and retail media should reach 178.2 billion dollars, or about 15.6 percent of global ad revenue, surpassing total TV ad spend for the first time.[4]

Deals this week underline the pivot to connected TV. On December 8, Equativ and Deutsche Telekom announced an expanded partnership making Equativ the exclusive ad server and first programmatic partner for MagentaTV across Europe, ahead of the FIFA World Cup 26.[2] The agreement brings dynamic ad decisioning, addressable TV, and privacy first targeting to more than 5.5 million German TV customers, giving brands premium sports and entertainment inventory with richer data and measurement.[2]

Regulators also remain active. In the United States, broadcast and political advertising rules were a focus of Federal Communications Commission activity during the week of December 1 to 5, reinforcing disclosure and sponsorship identification requirements for stations carrying issue and candidate ads.[3] Compared with earlier this year, the balance has shifted further toward digital, AI enabled, and retail media channels, while traditional broadcasters face tighter rules, softer pricing, and the need to offer more data driven, cross platform packages in response.

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