The global advertising market is on track to reach $1.19 trillion in 2025, according to the latest Global Ad Forecast from WARC. The report says this represents an 8.9% rise, raising its forecast from the 7.4% growth projected in September. According to the report, the revision is due to stronger results from large online platforms and a softer-than-expected impact from U.S. trade tariffs.

WARC’s projections are based on data from 100 markets worldwide and run through a proprietary neural network trained on more than two million data points. The goal, according to WARC, is to map how advertisers are shifting investment patterns in response to changing economic and platform dynamics.

WARC Media’s Head of Content, Alex Brownsell, said advertising has largely broken away from the broader economic cycle. He explained that new spending from digital native sectors and the growing influence of commerce have altered the structure of the market.

Big Tech’s share continues to expand

The report shows a continued concentration of ad spend among Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. Excluding China, these three companies are expected to take 56.1% of global ad spend in 2025, which equals $556.6 billion. WARC expects their share to rise to 58.8% by 2027.

The numbers show how much of the market’s growth is cycling through the largest platforms. However, WARC notes that the scale of big tech companies gives these companies the advantage to reinvest in infrastructural development. Meta, for example, is reinvesting about 30% of its quarterly earnings into research and development, which fuels products like Reels and Advantage+.

Google’s investments follow a similar pattern. Alphabet raised its full-year capital expenditure outlook to the range of $91 billion to $93 billion. This spending includes data centers, servers, networking systems, and other infrastructure that support the company’s AI services. During its Q3 earnings call remarks, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai credited its ad revenue growth to the continued use of AI in Search. Google has expanded AI-driven experiences like AI Mode and AI Overviews, which are built on the Gemini model.

Both companies reported higher quarterly ad revenue this year. Meta’s Q3 ad revenue rose 26% year-over-year to reach $50 billion. Google reported $74 billion in ad revenue in the same period, which is a 12% increase from the previous year.

Emerging platforms grow, but from smaller bases

The WARC report says not all platforms follow the same path. For instance, TikTok and Reddit are gaining share at a faster rate. TikTok could reach $45.2 billion in ad revenue by 2027, although this is still significantly lower than Meta’s projected earnings for the same year. A U.S. executive order signed in September 2025 has helped reduce uncertainty around TikTok’s largest market, which is estimated at about $12 billion this year.

In its latest quarter, Reddit said its ad revenue reached   $549 million, a 74% surge.

Forecasts for 2026 and 2027 show continued growth

The report also says global ad spend could reach $1.30 trillion in 2026, driven by the expanded men’s FIFA World Cup and the U.S. midterm elections. By 2027, global ad spend could reach $1.40 trillion, which WARC says would represent a doubling of market size compared to the immediate post-pandemic years.

Where spending is coming from

The U.S. remains the largest ad market. WARC projects the U.S. will account for 35.3% of global spend next year, which equals $421.1 billion. The top 10 markets are expected to account for more than 70% of global spend in 2025.

Retail media continues to expand its share of global budgets. WARC reports that the category now represents nearly 15% of worldwide spend. The report also notes that sectors such as clothing and accessories send more than 80% of incremental budgets to search, social, and retail media platforms. This trend helps explain why Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta continue to capture the strongest share of growth.