This Year, Next Year, 2023 Global End-of-Year Forecast

6 Dec 2023

At the close of 2023, the global advertising market remains on pace for 5.8% annual growth, despite inflation, high interest rates, China's sluggish economy and lingering impacts from the pandemic. While nominal growth will decelerate slightly in 2024, the five-year outlook remains strong, with retail media and digital out of home poised for aggressive expansion.

There are 3 major shifts happening:

1. Direct-to-Consumer
Advertisers, even those enlisting the expertise of agencies, are drawing on deeper and often more direct relationships with their customers. This is especially true of the automotive, media and entertainment sectors, disintermediating customer marketing and allowing for more personalized messaging (where consented/logged in).

2. Sports & Events
In the face of atomization of an individual’s day-to-day experiences—where their entertainment, search and shopping recommendations, and even their news digest, is increasingly customized and algorithmically driven—brands are leaning into shared experiences and live, fan-based events as something that can create a sense of community.

3. Artificial Intelligence
Just as every business is now a “digital" company, the same will soon be true of AI—especially in the world of advertising. Artificial intelligence will permeate products, services and operations at all companies, even if early benefits accrue primarily to those technology providers developing large language models and supplying the compute needed to train and query them.