Big Tech's share of global ad spend reaches 6%

Alex Brownsell, Cinzia Petio

An overview of Big Tech advertising spend between 2014 and 2021.

The collective ad spend of eight technology companies - Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Baidu, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix and Tencent - in 2021 totalled $46.6bn, according to WARC Media’s latest Global Ad Trends report.

This means that ad investment by ‘Big Tech’ brands exceeds that of entire categories, as defined by Nielsen Ad Intel, such as the global food (which spent $27.3bn in 2021) and transport & tourism ($45.2bn) industries.

The ‘Big Tech’ industry now accounts for 6.0% of all ad investment globally. This share is higher than that of the technology & electronics industry, which represents 5.4% of the...

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