Measured media spending in the U.S. retail sector reached 49.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. The category recorded by far the highest investment in advertising that year, which includes spending on TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor, and digital advertising.

Advertising in the retail industry Amazon was the leading retailer in the United States in terms of ad spend. The company spent over 13 billion dollars in ads in 2022. That year, other major retailers, such as Walmart and Macy’s, had an ad spend of 3.4 billion and 1.3 billion dollars, respectively. Overall, retailers increased their investments in advertising by 23.5 percent in 2022 compared to 2021.

Macy’s: One of America’s leading retail companies Macy’s Inc. is an American department store chain founded in 1858, with its headquarters in Ohio, United States. The company’s net sales worldwide amounted to close to 24.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. As of 2022, Macy's employed around 94.6 thousand people. However, the enterprise's employee peak was in 2012 when the company had roughly 176 thousand people working for them.

According to market estimates, total media advertising spending the United States in 2020 would amount to 225.8 billion U.S. dollars. By 2024, the figure is expected to grow to 322 billion dollars.. Advertising spending in the U.S. – additional information

Advertising can utilize almost any form of media to meet its needs, including print, television, radio, cinema, outdoor, mobile and online. If there is a space where consumers are going to look at, advertisers will buy it up. The United States, in particular, is the largest advertising market in the world. China is to be the second leading market according to the ranking, yet its ad expenditures are estimated to represent less than half of the amount calculated for the U.S. Television is the main medium for advertisers in the U.S., as it has accounted for about 40 percent of all advertising spending in the country since 2010. However, with the rise of digital platforms, not all mediums are as heavily invested in as others. Particularly traditional mediums such as radio, magazines and newspapers all suffered a decrease in ad spending, with newspapers suffering the most. Newspaper ad spent is forecast to decline from nearly 15 percent in 2010 to about 5.5 percent in 2020. Despite being a leader in the advertising industry as of 2015, television’s share of advertising spending is also projected to decrease in the coming years. Digital is forecast to become the main media for advertisers in the U.S., accounting for 37 percent of all advertising spending in the country in 2017. In terms of revenue, digital advertising in the U.S. is forecast to generate more than 210 billion U.S. dollars by 2022, with search advertising accounting for the largest portion of this amount. Banner ads and social media advertising also belong to digital formats important for advertisers in the U.S. Within the digital market, mobile advertising is also a heavily invested in sub-sector of the advertising industry. In 2020, this spending on mobile ads in the country reached 98.3 billion U.S. dollars. Search advertising and display advertising account for the majority of mobile advertising spending.

Internet advertising was projected to be the medium with the largest share of advertising revenue in the United States in 2022, with 61 percent. Newspapers and magazines were projected to account for roughly 2.7 and 3.3 percent respectively

Advertising spending in the United States – additional information

The U.S. is the largest advertising market worldwide. In 2021, advertising spending in the U.S. amounted to 285 billion U.S. dollars. Second-ranked China spent roughly 90 billion U.S. dollars in advertising that year, a significantly smaller share in comparison to the U.S.

Television remains the leading traditional medium in the U.S. About 68 billion U.S. dollars were invested in television advertising in the U.S. in 2021. In 2022, TV was expected to account for 21 percent of all advertising revenue in the country. Up until recently TV was the main medium overall, however, digital has seen unprecedented growth in the last few years and took the lead ahead of television. Digital advertising spending in the U.S. is estimated to increase from about 199 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 to just over 341 billion by 2026. Digital search is one of the main formats of digital advertising in the U.S., accounting for roughly 40 percent of the U.S. ad expenditure in 2021. Another key trend is the rise of mobile platforms in the advertising industry in the U.S. Mobile investments are projected to increase in the coming years while desktop will see declines at the same time.

Television advertising spending in the United States was projected to amount to 60.38 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, marking a decrease compared to the previous year. Spending was expected to continue decreasing over the next few years, before reaching an expected 54.74 billion in 2027.

TV advertising landscape in the U.S.

Television remains a leading source of news and entertainment throughout the United States. Even though the internet has long overtaken TV as the most invested-in advertising medium in the U.S., companies of all sizes still count on the power of (linear) television for marketing purposes. During the 2020-21 TV broadcast season, for example, brands were willing to pay nearly 800 thousand U.S. dollars for a 30-second spot during NBC’s Sunday Night Football, and even for not-sports-related programs, media buyers dig deep into their pockets.

Reinventing TV advertising one match at a time

In 2020, Procter & Gamble Co. was the largest advertiser on U.S. network television, with more than 900 million U.S. dollars in annual investments. The CPG giant that owns some of the world’s most popular cleaning and personal care brands, such as Braun, Gillette, and Pantene, has been a mainstay of the U.S. advertising scene for many decades. In 2021, the company reinvented its ad strategy by asking consumers to co-create a commercial via an interactive website. The 60-second spot that premiered during the Super Bowl (the biggest advertising event of the year) featured numerous P&G brands, characters such as Charmin’s Ultra Strong Bear, and celebrities such as Sofia Vergara.

In 2021, U.S. ad revenue reached close to 304 billion U.S. dollars. Over the past decade, excluding 2020 when the advertising market was reorganized due to the coronavirus outbreak, advertising revenue in the United States has been constantly growing. In 2021, the ad market in the country saw positive growth of 22.7 percent, showing recovery from the impact of the pandemic. Which media are important for U.S. advertisers?    Industry figures indicate the clear significance of internet advertising, and within that the predominance of search. TV advertising has been dethroned by increased internet advertising and is calculated to account for close to 21.4 percent of ad total media ad revenues in 2022. U.S. CMOs are investing less in offline media in favor of digital formats. Traditional media are facing continuous reductions in marketing budgets, while digital media remain the focus of marketers. Magazines and newspapers are experiencing the most serious declines in ad spending, with growth rates below five and 10 percent respectively.

In 2022, Google's parent company, Alphabet, spent 4.37 billion U.S. dollars on advertising in the United States, up from 3.6 billion dollars from the previous year. In 2020 the respective advertising spending was 2.5 billion dollars.

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.

In 2025, total out-of-home (OOH) advertising spending in the United States will exceed a forecast 9.5 billion U.S. dollars, up from an estimated 9.2 billion dollars in 2024. The annual figure was projected to continue to rise, reaching nearly 10.6 billion dollars by 2028.

The source projected that advertising spending will continuously grow in almost all world regions between 2025 and 2026. In the United States and Canada, the figure will increase by around 4.8 percent in that period, standing just below 359 billion U.S. dollars by the latter year. Meanwhile, Latin America will experience an expansion of approximately 8.5 percent, whereas ad spending in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was predicted to stale.

In 2022, Amazon was the largest advertiser in the United States, with advertising investments reaching around 13.5 billion U.S. dollars. Other prominent advertisers on this list included Comcast, Procter & Gamble, Walt Disney, and Alphabet (Google).

Digital media takes over the ad market in the United States

In 2022, the largest share of ad expenditures in the United States was attributed to digital pure-play media with 61 percent. Compared to 2019, the pre-COVID era, total media ad revenue is expected to grow by 124 percent in 2021, with video showing the most significant growth, while cinema exhibiting the smallest rate.

Comcast Corp’s revenue soars, but pay TV share shrinks

Established in 1963, Comcast Corporation is a global telecommunications and media company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company offers cable TV and home internet services to millions of customers in the United States. In 2022, total revenue of Comcast Corporation increased and amounted to 121 billion U.S. dollars. That year, the company was estimated to have a pay TV market share in the United States of 22.4 percent – a number that is, however, predicted to decrease slightly in the coming years.

Among the presented media, online audio is projected to be the most under-invested media in the United States in 2022. It is expected to take a significantly larger share of consumers' media time than the share they take of ad spending. The situation is expected to be opposite for social media.

It was calculated that the total advertising expenditure in North America in 2021 amounted to about 297.5 billion U.S. dollars. However, the spending increased by nearly 19 percent that year, after decreasing by just above one percent in the previous year due to the impact of the coronavirus. Advertising spending in the United States The United States is the largest advertising market in the world, with ad spending amounting to 250 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Looking at breakdowns of expenditures by medium, in 2021 and 2025, approximately 153 billion U.S. dollars were directed towards internet ads in 2021, which is estimated to increase even further in 2025. This was followed by over 72 billion U.S. dollars spent on ads on TV in 2021 and is expected to increase by roughly 10 billion in 2025. Advertising spending in Canada The advertising market in Canada is also following the global growth trend. Media spending in Canada has been steadily growing since 2012, reaching 11.8 billion U.S. dollars in net ad spend in 2019. Unsurprisingly, in 2020, when the global advertising market was affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Canadain market also suffered. That year ad spend in the country fell to 10 billion U.S. dollars. Nonetheless, once the industry returns to normal, data on specific media expenditures in Canada suggest that the rise of the digital channels is evident in the country, as the advertising dollars are being directed towards the internet, while traditional media such as magazines and newspapers will be seeing less and less investments in the near future.

Every year billions of dollars are spent on advertising on social media in the United States. In 2022, the amount reached 66 billion U.S. dollars, and included paid advertising on social networks as well as games and applications on social media. By 2025, advertisers are expected to spend over 82 billion dollars on promoting their products on social networks. Facebook commands the lion’s share of these expenditures (more than 80 percent), followed by LinkedIn and Pinterest with four and two percent respectively. Social network advertising – a closer look   Studies show that a little over 90 percent of U.S. companies are and will be using social media for marketing purposes. In 2017, social messaging and video were thought to be the trends of the future in relation to social media advertising and believed to have the biggest effect on marketing strategies. Lo and behold, advertising spending on social video has been growing ever since, and is expected to amount to nearly 15 billion U.S dollars in 2021. Even in this respect, Facebook has the lead, especially when it comes to influencer marketing. In fact, all tiers of influencers - from microinfluencers to celebrities - post the majority of their videos on Facebook. The second choice of platform to share their videos is YouTube, which despite being 'the' video sharing platform is not as popular yet among influencers most probably due to smaller user reach.

In 2024, social media advertising spending in the United States amounted to 83 billion U.S. dollars, out of nearly 361 billion total online media advertising spending forecast for that year.

In 2022, retail was forecast to be the industry with highest digital advertising spending in the United States. Its digital ad spend was projected to amount to 57.2 billion U.S. dollars. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) services ranked second, with a spend of 36.03 billion. Total digital ad expenditure in the U.S. in 2022 was expected to amount to 220.93 billion U.S. dollars.

In 2022, advertisers in the United States were projected to spend more than 127 billion U.S. dollars on programmatic digital display advertising. By 2024, expenditures are expected to increase to over 168 billion U.S. dollars.

Programmatic digital video ads

A programmatic advertising platform is used to identify online users and consumers quickly and effectively. Such a platform gives buyers and sellers more information to form strategies around. Expenditures on programmatically traded digital video ads in the United States have also been growing steadily over the past few years, with spending on this type of advertising being projected to reach around 40 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.

Digital ad fraud

Digital advertising fraud is expected to increase significantly over the coming years. Between 2018 and 2022, costs relating to digital ad fraud were projected to double, reaching roughly 81 billion U.S. dollars worldwide by the end of 2022. In the second quarter of 2019, about 39 percent of ad impressions served programmatically in India were fraudulent, making it the country with the highest ad fraud rate in the world during that period. During the same quarter, the United States had an ad fraud rate of 19 percent.

In 2024, online advertising revenues in the United States will reach an estimated 252.8 billion U.S. dollars, over twice as much as all other listed media combined. According to the projections, digital ad spending will continue to expand over the following four years, surpassing 275 billion dollars by 2028. Meanwhile, the results of broadcast TV will decrease. Radio and out-of-home (OOH) – including digital out-of-home (DOOH) – media will experience compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 0.6 and 2.4 percent in the period, respectively. It is a digital world, after all The internet's hegemony in the American market seems far from reaching a ceiling despite its skyrocketing growth throughout the 21st century. Between 2013 and 2023, online ad revenue in the U.S. increased more than five-fold, reaching 225 billion dollars in the latter year. Search, display, and video collectively accounted for over 90 percent of that figure, making them the U.S. leading formats by share of the digital ad spend. Traditional media's role in the ad landscape The ranking of fastest-growing ad media in the U.S. in 2023 reveals that only business-to-business (B2B) channels recorded double-digit increase rates. Cinema – still recovering from the pandemic – followed, along with the internet and OOH advertising.

In 2023, the sugar and confectionary products industry in the United States spent slightly over 627 million U.S. dollars on advertising, up from 543.6 million dollars a year earlier. That represents an annual increase of over 15 percent.

The source forecast that advertising spending in Latin America will amount to approximately 25.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, up 7.6 percent from 23.7 billion dollars a year earlier. The annual figure was projected to continue increasing, reaching 29.7 billion dollars by 2026.

According to the results of a 2022 survey carried out among owners or senior leaders/managers at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the United States, slightly more than 70 percent of the participating companies had advertising budgets of up to 100,000 US dollars.