Dive Brief:

• Global media spending will grow 6% to $656 billion next year, helped by sponsorships for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo and political advertising going into the U.S. presidential election. Digital advertising for the first time will make up more than half of the total at $336 billion, per a forecast that the World Advertising and Research Center (WARC) shared with Marketing Dive.
• Google's share of the global ad market will be 23%, ahead of Facebook's 13% and Amazon's 2.5%, WARC predicted. Financial services companies will boost spending by 12% to $53.4 billion, faster than other industries such as household goods (11%), transportation and tourism (9%), telecommunications and utilities (8.5%) and technology (8.4%). While the retail industry is the biggest spender, its growth will be the slowest at 2.6% to $65.4 billion.
• Next year's growth rate in ad spending will be more than twice as much as this year's 2.5% gain to $618.7 billion, per a revised forecast by WARC. The researcher in February had forecast 4.3% growth in ad spending this year, but last week lowered its estimate because of a slowdown in consumer spending and economic output.

Dive Insight:

WARC's ad spending forecast indicates that cyclical events, such as the Olympic Games and U.S. elections, will be strong drivers of marketing activity. U.S. broadcaster NBC this year estimated that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo will set a record by surpassing the $1.2 billion in TV commercials it sold during 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, Bloomberg reported. Political ad spending in the U.S. will surge 57% to $9.9 billion next year from $6.3 billion in 2016 amid growth in fundraising and digital advertising, WPP's ad-buying unit GroupM predicted in June.

This forecast supports other research that shows advertisers are shifting their spending to digital media as consumers spend more time on smartphones watching videos, interacting on social media or browsing the mobile web. Google, Facebook and Amazon will be the key beneficiaries of that continued trend as their share of global ad spending reaches a combined 40%, earning them the collective "triopoly" nickname.

WARC's forecast is slightly more optimistic than a revised outlook that Publicis-owned media agency Zenith published this month. The firm downgraded its estimate of global media spending growth to 4.4% — from a prior forecast of 4.6% — to total $640 billion. Zenith also forecast that annual spending growth will remain steady at 4.3% to 4.4% through 2021. The firm's Advertising Expenditure Forecast estimated that spending on social media will jump 20% to $84 billion this year, while newspaper and magazine spending will fall 6% to $69 billion.