Global Ad Trends: The Investment Gap

This report summarises the latest research from WARC's Data platform, with a focus on the gap between advertising investment and media consumption. Key findings include:
  • Spend on TV and social media is highly inflated in relation to daily consumption, while audio formats appear to be heavily undervalued by advertisers.
  • Social media now attracts more investment than linear TV. Social spend would need to reduce by $94.3bn in order to mirror consumption levels next year.
  • Consumers spend a fifth of the media day in social feeds, and are forecast to spend twice as long with social media than with online press next year.
  • Podcasts are potentially undervalued by as much as $40bn and present one of the biggest opportunities, particularly among those aged 16–24 and lower...

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