Every major industry will increase total ad spend in the next two years, with media and entertainment leading the pack. Programmatic and B2B ready for a digital shift, while mobile remains dominant with in-game advertising. Here are four takeaways from EMARKETER’s Industry Ad Spending Benchmarks: Q4 2024 and what they mean for the upcoming years.
1. Three industries will have a compound annual growth rate of over 10% during the next two years. Media and entertainment will grow 12.8%, retail 11.0%, and technology and electronics 10.8%, per our forecasts.
After a few fallow years thanks to the actor and writer strikes, media and entertainment is bouncing back, said our analyst Yory Wurmser. Retail will be strong as the economy picks up. The industry already accounts for over a quarter of total media ad spend, and that will grow to 27.5% by 2026.
“It’s a combination of improving economic conditions bolstering everyone,” said Wurmser. “We’re seeing some industries recovering that were struggling. Digital ad spending is going to grow in every industry, which shows you that the economy is fairly strong.”
2. Programmatic growth this year comes from incremental digital spending more than the cannibalization of traditional ad spending, which is flat. That’s set to change: In 2025 and 2026, $9.56 billion will migrate to digital from traditional ad spending.
“Programmatic is going to continue to grow really strongly, more strongly than digital advertising overall, because of a lot of money going to retail media and into video,” said Wurmser.
3. More than half of B2B advertising is in traditional channels. In 2024, 54.4% of B2B ad spend is still in traditional channels such as directories, magazines, newspapers, out-of-home, radio, and TV.
“That’s very different from the economy or the advertising ecosystem as a whole,” said Wurmser. “A lot of it has to do with advertising in niche trade publications.”
That disparity won’t last. Digital’s share of B2B ad spend will reach 48.0% in 2026, compared to 45.6% this year.
4. In-game advertising is still primarily a mobile affair. There’s movement in advertising on consoles, but the technology isn’t there yet. Over 90% of in-game advertising is still on mobile.
“Mobile game advertising has grown at a pretty nice clip, and it’s going to continue,” said Wurmser.
Another factor that has helped is the wider array of games now available on mobile. More complex casual games with a variety of monetization strategies and rich media ad formats are available, as developers rely less on hypercasual games.
This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.