By Megan Graham

A major advertising forecaster said global trade disruptions and economic deglobalization have led it to cut ad revenue growth expectations for 2025 to 6%, excluding U.S. political spending, from its December prediction of 7.7%.

WPP Media, a unit of London-based advertising giant WPP that was formerly called GroupM, said global ad revenue in 2025 will reach $1.08 trillion, in a report published in the U.K. on Tuesday. But the uncertainty of the moment is a drag on both business and consumer investment, WPP Media said, leading to the firm's reduced expectations.

"After a broadly consistent trend of increasing economic openness and the expanding role of trade in economic growth over the last two centuries, the current disruption of global trade and economic deglobalization -- shifting trading activity into aligned blocs -- is a significant break," said the report, written by Kate Scott-Dawkins, WPP Media's global president of business intelligence. "If the current trajectory continues, we do expect this to have a chilling effect on global advertising growth over the next five years."

The firm's ad revenue forecast now projects a global compound annual growth rate of 5.4% between 2025 and 2030, compared with the expected 6.4% compound annual growth rate between 2024 to 2029 from last December's forecast, excluding U.S. political revenue.

Amid all the uncertainty, many marketers have appeared to take a wait-and-see approach as they maintain planned ad investments but push for more flexibility in their buys.

But the conditions mean AI is likely being implemented at an even faster clip than it would have been otherwise, WPP Media said.

"We expect economic uncertainty is speeding up some AI experimentation with advertisers looking to apply AI-derived production cost savings into more working media," the report said.

It also noted that 2025 is set to mark the first time more than half of content-driven ad revenue will come from user-generated platforms and content, rather than professionally produced content.

"At the same time as audiences globally reckon with a sharp pullback from globalization, we continue to see the effects of decentralization of media, content and commerce," it added.

Write to Megan Graham at megan.graham@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 09, 2025 19:00 ET (23:00 GMT)

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