Global ad revenue to grow 8.9% by end of 2026: WPP Media
WPP Media’s 'This Year Next Year 2026 Global Midyear forecast' is an upward revision from the 7.1% forecast in December
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Published: Jun 16, 2026 8:33 AM | 2 min read
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- WPP Media's 'This Year Next Year 2026 Global Midyear forecast' predicts global advertising revenue (excluding US political) will grow by 8.9% by 2026, reaching $1.3 trillion, an increase from the previous forecast of 7.1%.
- The Asia-Pacific region is expected to see a 6.7% growth in advertising revenue, while the U.S. anticipates a growth of 11.9%, driven largely by investments in AI.
- Social media remains the largest advertising channel but is projected to experience a slowdown in growth starting in 2027 due to factors such as plateauing user engagement and emerging competition from AI chatbots.
- The report highlights that traditional and generative search will comprise 21.8% of total advertising revenue by 2026, while global content-driven advertising is expected to generate $720.2 billion, although its share of total revenue is anticipated to decline by 2031 due to AI-driven changes in content creation and consumption.
WPP Media has released its 'This Year Next Year 2026 Global Midyear forecast' that projects global advertising revenue (excluding US political) to grow 8.9% by the end of 2026, reaching $1.3 trillion.
This is an upward revision from the 7.1% WPP Media forecast in December.
For APAC, WPP has projected 6.7% growth in 2026.
As per the report, AI investment and the advertising it generates, both from AI-native companies and from traditional advertisers deploying AI to improve efficiency across their businesses, is providing a powerful countervailing force to external economic headwinds.
In the U.S., where the AI rush is most concentrated, ad revenue growth is expected to reach 11.9%, also an upgrade from our prior estimate, it states.
The report further mentions that Social remains the largest single channel in our forecast and the largest contributor to Content-driven advertising segment growth. However, its year-over-year growth will decelerate to single digits from 2027, and three converging headwinds may force a re-evaluation of established models: time spent with social platforms is expected to plateau or decline; age-related access restrictions are taking effect worldwide; and AI chatbots are emerging as competing platforms upon which consumers spend more time.
Commerce, led by retail media, is increasingly the foundation upon which the industry is being built. But the channel will face new challenges as commerce behavior shifts to generative search and social. Messages directed at humans to influence human behavior may not be sufficient for an era in which a meaningful share of commercially relevant decisions are made by non-human systems, like AI agents.
Meanwhile, traditional search and generative search will account for 21.8% of total advertising revenue in 2026. Global content-driven advertising is projected to earn $720.2 billion in 2026, yet its share of total advertising revenue is set to fall by 2031 — shaped by AI-driven transformations in how content is both created and consumed.
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