Global advertising spend to fall by 8.1% in 2020

An overview of advertising spend forecasts for 2020 by market, product vertical, media and format.

Global advertising spend is set to fall by 8.1% – $49.6bn – to $563bn this year, according to WARC Data's latest Global Advertising Trends report. Based on data from 96 markets, this is an absolute downgrade of $96.4bn compared to WARC’s previous forecast of 7.1% growth made in February 2020.

Among major markets, the steepest cuts are seen in Brazil (-22.5%), Italy (-21.7%) and South Africa (-19.6%).

France sees the largest reversal in fortunes, with 2020 originally going to bring strong growth of 10.0%. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and a future global recession has cut this by 28.7...

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