Nine in ten dollars entering the global ad market goes to online only channels, with social media the largest single advertising medium, but with retail media well and truly in the running – and growing.
The latest figures from WARC show that 90% of incremental ad dollars this year are paid to advertise on online-only platforms, meaning that legacy media owners – even those with online properties in their portfolios – are competing over the course of the year for the equivalent of what Facebook makes in an average month.
Of all new ad dollars entering the market this year, two in five are going to a social media platform, one in five is going towards search advertising, and one in five is being paid to retail media platforms.
The owners of the largest platforms in these sectors – Meta, Alphabet and Amazon– now attract over half (55.8%) of total advertising spend outside of China, a share which is on track to top 60% by 2030.
Social advertising gets the likes
Social media ad spend is projected to rise 14.9% this year to a total of $306.4bn, equivalent to over a quarter (26.2%) of all advertising spend in 2025. Further growth, of 12.8% and 11.9%, is forecast next year and into 2027, by when the social market is expected to be worth $386.9bn – equal to 28.5% of all ad spend.
Within this, Meta is expected to record growth of 14.8% this year, with a total of $184.1bn accounting for 60.1% of all social media spend and 15.7% of all ad spend worldwide. Meta’s share of the social market is expected to dip to 59.3% by 2027, owing to continuing growth of TikTok over the forecast period 2025-2027, though its share of total ad spend will still rise to 16.9%.
Instagram is still growing at a faster pace than the core Facebook platform, with growth averaging 16.4% over the forecast period compared to an average rise of 10.4% for Facebook.
TikTok continues to outpace both platforms, however, gaining market share in the process. Ad spend on TikTok is expected to average 21.6% over the forecast period, drawing 11.7% of all social media spend in 2027 (up from a share of 10.3% this year).
Search and retail media catching up
Search advertising spend is set to rise by an anticipated 10.0% this year to $253.2bn – equivalent to a fifth (21.6%) of all advertising spend. Google is the dominant player, with anticipated ad revenue of $217.8bn equal to 86% of the search market in 2025. This growth comes as the company faces a US antitrust hearing this week over a potential monopoly of the online ad market.
Advertising spend on retail media platforms is set to grow at an average rate of 12.6% over the forecast period, though this is a marked slowdown from previous years. Retail media ad spend is on course to rise 13.7% this year to a total of $175.0bn – a 14.9% share of global spend.
At an anticipated $62.0bn in 2025 (up 18.7% year-on-year), Amazon accounts for over a third (35.4%) of the retail media market and 5.3% of all ad spend, though its share of both is rising.
Retail the biggest user
New monitoring from WARC and Nielsen sheds fresh light on spend within the social media sector. The newly developed dataset shows that a windfall in spend among retailers buoyed social media growth in the second quarter during the lead up to the introduction of new US trade tariffs on so called Freedom Day.
The enhanced monitoring shows that retail is the largest category on both Instagram and TikTok, with shares of approximately a quarter and a fifth, respectively. Retailers were seen to have increased spend on Instagram (+18.8%) and TikTok (+56.8%) at a much faster rate than on Facebook (+3.6%) during the second quarter, perhaps indicative of a wider strategic shift.
Looking at the delta – the absolute difference in spend between Q2 2024 and Q2 2025 – retailers increased Instagram spend by $651m – more than any other product category. The retail sector also recorded the highest delta on TikTok in Q2 2025, as spend rose by $661m. Remarkably, retailers accounted for a quarter (24.8%) of TikTok’s growth during the second quarter of 2025.
Elsewhere, the technology & electronics sector increased spend on Facebook most during the second quarter, with a rise of 59.1% equivalent to an additional $1.0bn. Tech brands also lifted spend markedly on Instagram (+$501m) and TikTok (+$484m) at this time, pushing their share of spend on these platforms to 7.6% and 15.8%, respectively. In both cases, this makes the tech category the second-largest on TikTok and Instagram, behind retail.
The second quarter windfall across the social media sector is the primary cause for our upgraded global ad forecast this year, the first upgrade to our outlook in more than 12 months.
