On the surface, the global ad industry appears to be in rude health. GroupM upwardly revised its This Year Next Year global ad revenue forecast for 2024 and expects it to surpass $1tn for the first time – and that’s excluding US political advertising, which itself totalled $15.1bn.

In the UK, despite uncertainty regarding the country's political and economic future, the ad market grew 8.3%, with further 7% growth now expected for 2025.

But, of course, there are numerous unpredictabilities next year, such as around how a new Donald Trump administration could impact global trade or pursue Big Tech regulation. Meanwhile, most ad growth is being driven by just five companies: Google, Meta, Amazon, ByteDance and Alibaba — suggesting a consolidation of ad revenue into fewer, bigger hands.

Kate Scott-Dawkins is GroupM's global president of business intelligence and author of the This Year Next Year report.

In conversation with Jack Benjamin, Scott-Dawkins explained that advertisers have grown accustomed to managing uncertainty over the past five years and that growth drivers such as retail media and streaming TV, as well as an influx of new AI-based startups, are likely to provide a boost to future ad spending.

"The uncertainty that advertisers are dealing with has existed and will continue to exist into next year," she said. "The advertising economy is going to continue despite that."

Scott-Dawkins will be presenting further details from This Year Next Year at The Media Leader's Future of TV Advertising Global conference in London next week.

Highlights:

2:24 : Toplines: positive growth despite uncertainty

8:13 : Big Tech's domination of ad revenue growth – is it healthy?

12:26 : Why the UK is outperforming expectations

16:43 : Volatility in the Chinese market

20:26 : Opportunities and knock-on effects as sport becomes more important for TV

23:36 : The importance of supporting publishing as it loses market share

27:02 : Tech brands to watch as they spend on marketing to promote AI

Related articles:

Global ad industry to grow 9.5% this year as revenue flows to tech giants

OOH tops £1bn in ad revenue in 2024 so far

UK TV exports fall 2% despite strong US demand

Explained: how we should treat GroupM, IPG and Zenith adspend forecasts

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Thanks to our production partners Trisonic for editing this episode.

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