Total media ad spend worldwide will decrease by 4.5 percent this year to reach $614 billion, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast.
Though the figure has slightly increased from the researcher’s 2020 projection of -4.9 percent, it’s a sharp decline compared to its pre-pandemic estimate of seven percent.
With the exception of China, the 37 ad markets that eMarketer tracks will report negative growth in total media ad spend this year. China will post a growth of 0.3 percent.
Emarketer says it revised growth downward for 27 markets this year because their Q2 performance was worse than expected and countries like France, Spain and the UK went into a second lockdown. Spain will be hit the hardest, at -14 percent growth.
In the US, ecommerce advertising compensated for losses seen in travel-related search advertising, which resulted in better-than-expected performance in Q2. Therefore, eMarketer expects total media ad spend in the US will decrease by 4.1 percent this year, up from its June forecast of -6.8 percent.
The US will rank eighth this year among the markets covered by eMarketer, up from 24th place in its previous forecast. In terms of digital ad spending, the US will place second with 7.5 percent growth, up from eMarketer’s previous projection of 19th place with 1.7 percent growth.
Emarketer expects total media ad spend worldwide will rebound to pre-pandemic levels in 2021 to reach $691 billion. Helping drive the rebound will be a boost in digital ad spend globally, at 16.4 percent in 2021—more than double the 7.9 percent growth that traditional media spend will see next year.
