WARC forecasts global ad spend rising 11.9% in 2026 to US$1.34 trillion, even as consumers cut back. Two-thirds of it flows into social, search and retail media, and nearly 60% to Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. For Australian operators, a rising market is a bigger auction, not a bigger business.
The Take: Global ad spend is set to grow nearly 12% in a year when a chunk of your customers say they are cutting back. That is not a boom. It is money crowding into fewer places, and little of the crowd is heading your way. Before you read "ad spend is up" as good news, look hard at where the up is going.
The forecast: WARC projects global advertising will rise 11.9% in 2026 to about US$1.34 trillion, after two years running near 10%. Social leads the pack up 21.3% to US$394.6 billion, search climbs 14.2% and retail media 14.3%. Technology and electronics advertising alone is tipped to grow 20.7%, with social taking more than 40% of that category's money. WARC's own Suzy Young calls it an apparent contradiction, ad money rising while an uneven economy squeezes the people it targets.
The concentration: Social, search and retail media together now take 66.4% of all spend. Alphabet, Amazon and Meta between them pull 59.7% of the global total outside China, a share the forecast expects to keep climbing toward 70% by 2028. The growth is real. The ownership of it is the whole story.
The share of the world's ad spend outside China now flowing to Alphabet, Amazon and Meta
The counter: Australia's own advertising market runs at roughly A$29 billion a year, and those same platforms take the lion's share of it here too. Spending harder into them feels like keeping up. It is also how a business ends up renting its entire customer base from three landlords.
For Australian operators: Read that split again. A rising market is not a rising business, it is a bigger auction. Put a real slice of budget into demand you own, your list, your site and your repeat buyers, so that when the platform price climbs you are not the only one absorbing it. Treat the triopoly as rented land that is useful but never yours. Match every dollar you hand it with one that builds something those platforms cannot switch off. The uneven economy WARC describes is the one your customers already live in, so win by spending where a squeezed buyer actually looks, not where the index is loudest.