Global advertising expenditure will grow 11.2% in 2021, driven by increased demand for eCommerce and online video, according to the latest Advertising Expenditure Forecasts from Zenith.
A total of £522bn is expected to be spent on advertising this year, £31bn more than was spent before the pandemic in 2019.
In the UK alone, ad spend is expected to grow 13.5%, 8.5% higher than in 2019. Three-quarters of that spend will be on digital advertising, Zenith says, rising to 77% in 2023. This puts the UK well ahead of the global market, where digital is to take a 58% share this year.
While eCommerce growth is expected to slow as pandemic restrictions ease, Zenith expects the channel to continue to pull in advertising spend around the world, driving 13% growth in social media spend and 12% growth in search in 2022.
However, online video advertising is forecast to be the fastest-growing digital channel in 2021, with spending rising 26% globally to reach £49bn.
Meanwhile, Zenith predicts that global social media advertising will expand by 25% this year to reach £107 billion, overtaking paid search in scale for the first time. Paid search will grow by 19% to reach £105 billion.
“As spend continues to follow fragmenting attention across channels and demographics, marketers are going to have to be really focused on understanding where the incrementality is coming from,” says Zenith UK’s chief strategy officer, Richard Kirk.
“Fail to solve this challenge and the danger is brands will simply erode their margins advertising to consumers who were on their way to buy anyway.”
