Even as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic, the advertising industry witnessed faster-than-expected growth rate in 2021 backed by US, UK and China and has prompted GroupM to revise upwards its ad growth forecast for 2021.
As per GroupM’s ‘This Year, Next Year’ global end-of-year forecast, the global ad industry’s growth rate in 2021 is now pegged at 22.5 per cent (excluding US political advertising), higher compared to its June prediction of 19.2 per cent. The higher growth rate was fuelled by higher spends being made on national digital ad campaigns by newer small businesses besides aggressive focus on advertising-driven topline revenue growth by apps or “digital endemic” businesses. In 2022, Group M expects the global ad industry to witness a growth of 9.7 per cent up from its June prediction of 8.8 per cent. So markets such as the US, France, Germany and Australia are expected to see an annual growth in the range of 4-5 per cent over the next five years. India, UK, Brazil, Canada, China and Japan are forecasted to grow in the range of 6-8 per cent per cent annually over the next five years, the report pointed out.
With online shopping being a buzzword in the pandemic times, digital advertising will end 2021 with a growth rate of a whopping 30.5 per cent (up from June forecast of 26 per cent). Digital advertising now accounts for the lion’s share of 64.4 per cent in 2021 and it isn’t a surprise that Alphabet, Meta and Amazon account for 80-90 per cent of this global total.