Interpublic’s Magna global has been peering into its crystal ball and is forecasting further strong ad growth in 2019 following a record 2018.
Global ad revenues grew by a record 7.2 per cent in 2018 to reach $552bn in the 70 countries covered by the report. Digital was once again by far the stand-out performer.
Digital advertising in 2018 barely slowed down from 2017’s growth rate (+17.6 per cent), despite new regulations on data privacy (e.g. GDPR in Europe) and the concerns expressed by some consumer brands in the last 18 months. Growing user consumption in emerging markets, product innovation, and robust demand from long tail advertisers drove search advertising growth of +16 per cent, while video (+29 per cent), and social media (+33 per cent) grew even faster.
Magna forecasts that digital advertising growth will slow down next year (+13 per cent) but, at that rate, will attract half of the world’s total adspend as early as 2019 or 2020.
For the global ad market as a whole Magna forecasts growth of 4.7 per cent in 2019, a partial slowdown caused largely by the absence of cyclical major sporting and political events.
The four largest ad markets are the US, China, Japan and the UK with Germany in fifth.
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