The latest global forecast from Dentsu shows adspend growth slowing to 5%, which is still higher than economic growth.
Global advertising spend growth is projected to slow to 5% this year, before rising to 5.5% in 2027. This outpaces economic growth, which is estimated to reach 3.1% in 2026, according to Dentsu‘s Global Adspend Forecast report.
Dentsu predicts worldwide adspend to reach $1.05trn by the end of the year, driven primarily by digital across all 56 markets analysed.
Digital represented a 69% share of all spend and includes fastest growing channels such as retail media, connected TV (CTV) and video, social, and digital out-of-home (DOOH). Analysis showed that despite economic uncertainty, there is confidence in big tech platforms like Meta, Amazon, and Google.
CTV has emerged as a direct competitor to linear TV with the ability to drive long-term growth and deliver multi-year brand building effects.
This is driven by “premium brand-safe content, sports rights and the expansion of ad supported subscription models”, across platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney+. According to the report, CTV is predicted to rise by 11.5% in 2026 as opposed to the 5.1% growth of video as a whole – with digital video (8.7%) working towards offsetting the 0% growth of linear TV.
Search growth has a more moderate forecast at 3.4%, which is largely spurred by the how AI is changing the landscape. This includes Google’s push towards an AI-forward model – which disrupts the traditional search channel performance.
Retail media has experienced double digit growth (12.3%) this year, but is estimated to fall to 11.4% in 2027.
Social and political advertising are forecast grow 12.8%, followed by technology at 12.5%, beverages 10.9%, and media and entertainment 6.4%. Dentsu’s reported noted that sports events, AI technologies, and political events are the driving forces behind grown across media.
Outdated distinctions
Adspend in the US is predicted to grow by 4.8% in 2026, Europe, Middle East and Africa by 3.6%, and Asia-Pacific by 5.9%.
The study found distinctions between TV and digital, or short-form versus long-form videos to be outdated, with platform algorithms now placing higher importance quality.
Non-skippable ads (where the ad plays in full before the viewer can see the next piece of content), are viewed for longer, but cost more per impression than skippable formats. This is producing a more meaningful distinction compared to traditional comparisons like linear versus digital.
Non-skippable ads deliver a small long-term sales lift, only winning over skippable ads if the attentive seconds is lower than five – past that, skippable ads give a much more significant boost to sales lift long-term.
Algorithm-based precision advertising continues to be a strong trend among advertisers with 75% of adspend predicted to driven by such by 2028.
Will Swayne, global practice president, Dentsu, said: “Analysing projected adspend trends allows marketers to balance their investments taking into account a dual focus: a snapshot of the current situation that is informing current sentiment across platforms and advertisers, and the longer-term forces that are reshaping how media connects with consumers.
“Looking at the forecast through the former lens, it’s easy to find a correlation between the projected slowdown in growth and the current economic uncertainty tied to emerging geopolitical tensions. Moving to the latter, our forecasts confirm the rising importance of algorithms in transforming media strategies.”
