Digital advertising spending of the entertainment industry in the United States was forecast to increase by 7.9 percent in 2022. Retail digital ad spending was projected to increase 12.2 percent, while digital ad spending of consumer packaged goods was forecast to increase 6.1 percent.

It was calculated that the digital advertising spending worldwide amounted to 549.51 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. The source projected that by 2027, the spending would reach 870.85 billion dollars.

Advertising spending - additional information

Advertising can utilize almost any form of media to meet its needs. Media including print, television, radio, cinema, outdoor, mobile and digital have all been targeted by advertisers. Global advertising spending has been constantly increasing (with the exception of 2020) since 2010, and is forecast to round up to nearly 856 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. Due to advances in technology and consumer preferences, not all media are as heavily invested in as others. As of 2022, the internet was considered the most important medium for advertisers, accounting for 62 percent of total media ad spend in 2022. Internet expenditures are projected to record a growth of 8.4 percent in 2023.

Digital advertising spending worldwide – which includes both desktop and laptop computers as well as mobile devices – stood at an estimated 522.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2021. This figure is forecast to constantly increase in the coming years, reaching a total of 835.82 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. Mobile internet advertising is a heavily invested sub-sector of the digital advertising industry. Mobile internet advertising spending is forecast to increase from 276 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 to nearly 495 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Following this pattern, mobile advertising spending in the U.S. is also forecast to grow in the coming years. Mobile ad spending in the U.S. is projected to gain nearly 25 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

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In 2022, global internet advertising revenue stood at 484 billion U.S. dollars. The source projected the revenue would increase to 663 billion by 2027.

Internet advertising in the U.S. – additional information

Internet or online advertising encompasses a range of formats including email, search engine, social media, display and mobile advertising. Display advertising uses pictures, videos, text and graphics to target consumers and ads are usually matched with potential consumers through the use of cookies.

The leading internet display advertisers in the United States in 2014, were ranked regarding their measured advertising spending. The resulting list, which only took into account spending on digital display advertising, saw Comcast ranked first. The American mass media company, founded in Mississippi in 1963, spent 215.9 million U.S. dollars on online display advertising in 2014. The runner up to Comcast was the Texas based telecommunications company AT&T with a spending of 168 million U.S. dollars.

The investments made in online advertising have grown substantially in the recent past. The revenue generated by online advertising in the U.S. has been recorded from the first quarter in 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2015. In the first quarter of 2007, online spending revenue amounted to 4.9 billion U.S. dollars. By the fourth quarter of 2013, this figure had risen to 12.11 billion U.S. dollars, growing further to 17.38 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2015.

A breakdown of the online advertising revenue in the U.S. in 2015, by type reveals which forms of internet advertising was most invested in, and perhaps deemed the most useful to a company operating online. It was revealed that search advertising, which increases a website or company’s visibility on search engine result pages, held the largest share of online advertising with 34 percent. Banner and mobile advertising rounded off the top three.

The Report Covers Online Advertising Companies Statistics and is Segmented by Advertising Format (Social Media, Search Engine, Video, Email), By Platform (Mobile, Desktop and Laptop), By End-User Vertical (Automotive, Retail, Healthcare, Bfsi, Telecom), By Geography (North America (United States, Canada), Europe (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Rest of Europe), Asia Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, India, Rest of Asia Pacific), Latin America, Middle East and Africa). The Market Sizes and Forecasts are Provided in Terms of Value in USD Billion for all the Above Segments.

During a survey published in November 2023, 25 percent of responding global brands stated they were planning to significantly increase their retail media budgets in 2023. Another 35 percent said they were planning to slightly increase them.

In 2024, digital advertising accounted for approximately 54 percent total media advertising spending in Latin America. The share was highest in North America, where it stood at 78.1 percent.

Online advertising revenue in the United States grew by 7.3 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, from 210 billion to 225 billion U.S. dollars. The figure first surpassed 100 billion dollars in 2018 and 200 billion in 2022, owing to the emergence of new channels and formats including digital audio (podcasts and streaming) and digital video (streaming and CTV) as well as strong growth from retail media.

Online advertising at a glance  Search is the dominating internet advertising format in the United States, accounting for 41.4 percent of the country's digital advertising revenue. Display follows, accounting for 30 percent of ad revenue, while 21 percent is attributed to digital video ads. The largest revenue share came from the performance-based pricing model, where buyers pay for quantifiable user reactions to online advertising. Cost per click, sales and leads are a few examples of such reactions. Close to 63 percent of online ad revenue is generated via this type of pricing model, while 35 percent were priced based on cost-per-mille.

Consumer attitudes to online ads  In a 2022 survey it was found that 41 percent of U.S. were often annoyed by ads on the internet. Unsurprisingly, younger generations in the United States were more influenced by social media advertising when it came to making purchasing decisions.

Internet advertising spending has been increasing worldwide for the past two decades, albeit at vastly different speeds. While North America maintains the top digital ad market globally, with spending set to surpass 223 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, other regions such as Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa are trailing behind.

The North American digital advertising landscape North America is known as the trailblazer of the global advertising scene, thanks to the strong performance and ongoing industry innovations in the United States. For many years, the U.S. has maintained its top spot as among the world’s largest ad markets, with spending exceeding 285 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 alone. Even though the industry saw investments and revenues plummet in the first year of the pandemic, digital advertising activities were not impacted nearly as much as their offline counterparts thanks to the unprecedented boost in digital consumption.

What are digital advertisers spending their money on?

In 2022, digital advertising spending worldwide is forecast to amount to an estimated 602 billion U.S. dollars, up from around 521 billion in 2021. Advertisers are digging deeper into their pockets than ever to catch the attention of their digitally savvy customers, but on which channels and technologies are they placing their bets? In 2021, search and social media were among the most invested-in digital ad formats globally, drawing between 152.8 billion and 152.5 billion U.S. dollars in digital ad budgets respectively. Meanwhile, mobile ad expenditures are also reaching new heights as millions of online users access and browse the web on their mobile devices every day.

In 2024, spending on advertising and marketing in digital and alternative media worldwide grew by over 13 percent. Meanwhile, investments in traditional media increased by little more than four percent. The same study projected that online and offline advertising and marketing combined global revenues would surpass 1.87 trillion dollars.

In 2021, digital advertising spending increased after a year of a slowdown the market endured when the world was hit by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. All three formats presented reported two-digital growth rates. Display grew most, with nearly a 35 percent growth rate, followed by paid search with 33 percent and digital classifieds with roughly 20 percent. For 2022, the source projected further growth, but the rates would not be nearly as high. The future of digital advertising Global marketers seem to agree that digital campaigns are very important to their overall promotional efforts. Regardless of which business type they represented, be it direct brand or a traditional business with or without an e-commerce component, the vast majority of global industry professionals considered digital media and formats as being crucial to their work. With this in mind, projections show that display advertising on social media will lead over online video, with expenditures on social close to double the amount devoted to video in 2020. After display, search is expected to take the second spot, with global ad spend surpassing 114 billion U.S. dollars that year. Classified has been and will remain the smallest format in terms of advertising investments.

In 2022, digital advertising accounted for 67 percent of total ad revenue worldwide. The share is expected to grow to 73 percent in 2028, reaching 70 percent in 2024.

The source forecast that digital advertising spending worldwide will reach 513 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, up 10.7 percent from 470 billion dollars a year earlier. The figure was predicted to continue rising, exceeding 600 billion by 2027. The same study projected that the internet's share in global ad spend will exceed 66 percent in 2027.

The Latin American expenditure is forecast to account for 2.48 percent of the global internet advertising spending in 2022. Moreover, the internet ad spending in North America is expected to contribute 47.37 percent in the same year.

After years of constant growth, online advertising revenue in the United States reached 64.5 billion U.S. dollars during the last quarter of 2023. This figure represents quarter-on-quarter growth of 12.3 percent and can be linked to the upward trend in advertising efforts during the holiday season.

Digital advertising in the United States is reaching new heights

In 2023, online advertising revenue in the United States amounted to 225 billion U.S. dollars. This record figure marked a year-over-year increase of 7.3 percent. As the leading digital advertising market in the world, the United States has also seen a steady rise in digital ad expenditure over the last few years, which is not surprising, as many of the companies behind the world’s largest digital ad platforms are headquartered there.

Which formats are driving online ad revenue growth?

Among the various types of digital advertising, search and banner campaigns account for the highest share of online ad revenue in the United States. While these two formats have been the most profitable avenues for digital marketers in the past, new channels and formats are attracting the attention of advertisers and reshaping the distribution of digital advertising budgets. As such, U.S. ad spend on social media, digital video, and mobile channels is forecast to increase at a fast pace in the following years.

In 2021, digital video advertising was expected to attract 80.1 billion U.S. dollars in spending worldwide and the source projected that the expenditure would increase to 120 billion by 2024. In the U.S., the spending is forecast to increase from 11.24 to 12.66 billion in the same period.

Digital ad spending in China was projected to reach around 176 billion U.S. dollars by 2026, over half of which would come from e-commerce and social advertising. Digital advertising would very likely maintain a major share of the total media ad revenue in the coming few years.

In 2023, around 2.1 trillion South Korean won were spent on internet advertising seen on computers. This represents a slight increase from the previous year. Spending was forecast to increase over the next two years. Spending on online advertisements has simultaneously been growing, and has shown no signs of slowing down. In 2023, most of this spending was for mobile ads. YouTube’s advertising dominance YouTube dominates the online advertising space in South Korea, with a potential advertising reach of around 44 million people as of January 2024, far surpassing other social media platforms. This was followed by Instagram, showing a trend favoring video and image-based social media platforms over more traditionally text-based ones. While the preference for YouTube and Instagram is reflected in spending on online video ads, such types of ads came second in terms of overall spending on different online ad formats. The rise of influencer advertising A 2023 survey found that over 45 percent of respondents had purchased influencer-endorsed products, with YouTubers being the most common type of influencer people bought products from. This further aligns with the platform’s overall success as a social media marketing medium. While spending on influencer advertising was low overall in South Korea, the fact that entertainment value was the main driver for clicking on social media ads in 2023 is a useful foundation for the potential expansion of the influencer sector.

In 2023, Peru was expected to be the fastest-growing digital advertising market in the world, with an annual growth rate of about 20 percent. Argentina and Chile rounded out the top three with annual increases of approximately 19 and 17 percent, respectively.

Digital advertising in Latin America

Based on the latest projections, five of the 10 fastest-growing digital ad markets will be in Latin America in 2023. While traditional media channels still have a firm grip over the region’s advertising landscape due to media consumption habits and infrastructural hurdles, there has been a steady shift towards digital approaches in recent years. In 2022, internet advertising spending in Latin America was expected to reach roughly 11.7 billion U.S. dollars, more than twice the amount that was invested in 2018. Interestingly, social media is set to draw the largest share of expenditures and outperform search in the running for the top digital advertising format in Latin America and the Caribbean.

What are the top digital advertising markets worldwide?

Data on the global distribution of internet advertising spending shows that North America and the Asia-Pacific region remain the largest spenders, with the United States setting the pace. And yet, forecasts also suggest that the most prominent players will see their market shares decline in the following years. Smaller fish such as Latin America or the Middle East and Africa (MENA), which currently represent less than two percent of global digital ad spend, are set to slowly but steadily leverage their massive growth potential in the future.

In 2023, roughly 703.6 million euros was spent on digital advertising in Finland. This was an increase of 0.2 percent from 2022. Over the past decade, online advertising grew significantly and more than doubled between 2013 and 2021. This type of advertising includes various online advertising methods such as display, instream and outstream video, mobile, native advertising, social media, and search engine marketing.