Ads, creators, and AI are everywhere in 2024

“The pace of change and innovation is accelerating, and that's bringing with it a lot of big new challenges for advertisers to navigate,” our analyst Jasmine Enberg said during our recent Outlook and Strategies for 2024’s Second Half summit. “It's also bringing pockets of new opportunities as ads become ubiquitous across platforms, creators reshape strategies, and AI powers it all.”

Here’s a look at how those three things—ad volume, creators, and AI—are shaping marketing in 2024.

1. Ads are everywhere

US ad spend will hit $389.49 billion this year, up 9.5% over 2023, per our March 2024 forecast. Major factors driving that growth include political ad spend, connected TV (CTV), and retail media.

This year US political ad spend will reach $12.32 billion, up 28.7% over the previous presidential election year in 2020, per our December 2023 forecast. A lot of that growth will come from digital, and CTV political ad spend will grow by over $1 billion.

CTV ad spend will grow by 18.8% this year to reach $28.75 billion, per our forecast. “The growth that you see in CTV and video is partly a reflection of the fact that virtually every streaming service, including those that vowed never to introduce ads, have now introduced ad-supported tiers,” said Enberg.

A growing share of CTV spend is coming from retail media, which will account for 14.6% of CTV ad spend in 2024 and over 20% of CTV ad spend come 2027, per our forecast. Retail media is powering partnerships in CTV and social media due to the value of its first-party shopper data.

The success of retail media has led to other industries from ride shares to travel to financial services building out their own ad networks. “They're mulling ways to introduce ads and to use the data to power advertising across other platforms,” said Enberg.

2. Creators are everywhere

“The question becomes how consumers will respond to the increasing ad loads as ads turn up everywhere,” said Enberg. And for her, the answer lies in creators.

“Young people in particular have long eschewed traditional advertising,” said Enberg. But creator-led advertising can capture Gen Z eyes by incorporating ads into content they’re willing to watch.

“Most influential campaigns will include a paid media component, whether it's content boosting or content licensing, which is the practice of creators allowing brands access to their accounts on social media to place ad campaigns,” said Enberg.

It’s working on TikTok. A majority (62.5%) of US consumers have noticed a change in shopping-related content following TikTok Shop’s rollout. But 91.7% have either increased or maintained their TikTok usage, per our US Social Commerce Survey.

3. AI is everywhere

AI’s everywhere status initially came from ChatGPT, which will have 77.2 million users by the end of this year, per our forecast. But Meta’s implementation of AI into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp makes the company a “dark horse” in the AI race because of its massive scale, said Enberg.

Meta only needs 43% of US Facebook users to use the tech monthly in order for it to reach ChatGPT’s scale. “As Meta continues to scale Meta AI, that will eventually provide advertisers with new surfaces to reach consumers,” Enberg said.

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