The duopoly reigns worldwide, though TikTok and Mercado Libre lead in digital ad spend growth

Google and Meta will account for just over 50% of worldwide digital ad spending in 2024, marginally higher than their 47% share in the US market. Amazon’s share will be much lower (8.8%)—although it will be among the leaders in revenue growth.

There is no triopoly at the worldwide level yet

• Amazon is not closing the gap with the two leaders. Amazon will grow its worldwide ad revenues by 26.4% this year, easily outpacing Meta (16.8%) and Google (9.9%, including YouTube). However, the legacy duopoly is building off such a massive base that Amazon will actually fall further behind Meta and hardly gain on Google. Meta’s $95 billion lead on Amazon this year will turn into a $98 billion lead by 2026, despite Amazon’s much faster growth.
• The most significant change in the worldwide rankings is Apple’s advancement. In our October 2023 iteration of this forecast, we foresaw Apple ranking 10th on the chart above. We now project 16.6% ad revenue growth for the smartphone-maker, and that its $10.58 billion take will land it at eighth internationally. This ranking ascent will mostly owe to China’s Kuaishou and Baidu underperforming, although Apple’s estimated total has been revised slightly upward as well.

Despite its political challenges, TikTok will lead the world in ad revenue growth

• TikTok and Mercado Libre will set the pace globally, though at vastly different scales. TikTok faces a ban in the lucrative US market, but unless and until that happens, we foresee continued booming growth for the ByteDance subsidiary. This year, TikTok will pull in 22 times the ad revenues of fellow fast-grower Mercado Libre($1.02 billion), but Latin America’s largest ecommerce retailer will rapidly ascend the advertising ranks in the coming years.

• Amazon will get a growth boost from its OTT video service. Amazon will benefit from a new kind of growth model in 2024, thanks to its ad-supported video-on-demand initiative with Prime Video. By the end of the year, Amazon will have transitioned most of its OTT viewers to an ad-supported subscription tier in the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, France, Mexico, and several other major markets. This will drive standout growth for Amazon in 2024 and buttress 2025 as well, as the initiative expands and matures in more countries.

Read the full report, Worldwide Digital Ad Spending Forecast H2 2024 Update.