The 2026 Midyear Ad Spend Reset
dentsu's May 2026 update trims global ad growth to 5.0% and $1.06 trillion for the year — here's the channel-by-channel breakdown of where the money actually moves, and how rival forecasters compare.
Global advertising will grow 5.0% in 2026 to reach $1.06 trillion, according to dentsu's Global Ad Spend Forecasts midyear update published 27 May 2026 — a downgrade from the 5.1% dentsu projected in December 2025, and a signal that the industry's post-pandemic momentum is cooling rather than stalling. The market already crossed the $1 trillion line in 2025, a full year ahead of dentsu's earlier prediction. The story of 2026 is not a downturn. It is a reset: slower headline growth, but a sharper concentration of dollars into a handful of fast-moving digital channels.
The headline numbers
dentsu's May update frames 2026 growth at 5.0%, down from a stronger-than-expected 5.8% in 2025, with 2027 forecast at 5.5%. The deceleration tracks economic anxiety: the International Monetary Fund projects global GDP growth of just 3.1% in 2026. Advertising is still outpacing the broader economy — but by a narrower margin than the industry enjoyed a year ago.
Will Swayne, dentsu's Global Practice President for Media & Integrated Solutions, tied the slowdown to "the current economic uncertainty tied to emerging geopolitical tensions," while pointing to a deeper structural force: "Algorithmically enabled ad spend (where algorithms are significantly involved in the buying decision) is now expected to reach 75% of total ad spend by 2028."
Where the growth concentrates
Digital remains the engine, holding a 69% share of spend across the 56 markets dentsu analyzes. But "digital" is not monolithic, and the May forecast is explicit about which sub-channels lead:
Retail media: +12.3% in 2026 and +11.4% in 2027 — one of the fastest-growing areas of digital, which dentsu calls a shift toward "commerce-led media." (Note the revision: dentsu's December 2025 forecast had pegged 2026 retail media growth at 14.1%.)
Total video: +5.1%, with Connected TV (CTV) rising 11.5% and digital video 8.7%, offsetting flat linear TV at 0.0%.
Search: moderating to 3.4% as AI answers, retail search, and social search erode traditional query volume — dentsu's case for a "total search strategy."
Social and Digital out-of-home (DOOH) round out the fastest-growing list.
By category, dentsu expects the strongest 2026 growth from Government, Social, Political & Organizations (+12.8%), Technology (+12.5%), Beverages (+10.9%), and Media & Entertainment (+6.4%) — a mix that reflects the year's election cycle, sports calendar, and the AI build-out.
The regional picture
dentsu's May update forecasts Americas growth of 4.8%, EMEA 3.6%, and APAC 5.9%. The December 2025 forecast had offered more market-level granularity, projecting APAC at $376.4 billion (+5.4%), the US at $460.5 billion, and standout emerging-market rates in China (+6.1%), India (+8.6%), and Brazil (+9.1%), with the UK leading Europe at +5.7%. Treat those market-specific figures as December vintage; the May regional aggregates supersede them where they overlap.
How the other forecasters compare
dentsu is the most conservative of the major shops, and the spread between forecasters is wide enough to matter for planning. WARC in January 2026 forecast global ad spend growing 9.1% to $1.30 trillion in 2026 — nearly double dentsu's growth rate — driven by Big Tech platforms capturing almost all incremental dollars. WARC's earlier Q3 2025 outlook had the figure at 8.1% to $1.27 trillion. eMarketer projects worldwide spend rising in 2026 with Meta overtaking Google on a net basis in the US for the first time, and Google plus YouTube combining for $229.42 billion in digital ad revenue globally.
The gap is not noise — it reflects different methodologies and what each shop counts (net vs. gross, inclusion of political and US-specific cyclical spend). The practical takeaway: dentsu's 5.0% is a floor-ish, cautious read; WARC's 9.1% is the optimistic ceiling. Plan to the range, not the point estimate.
About the data
dentsu's Global Ad Spend Forecasts is a biannual report analyzing ad spend by geography and media channel across 56 markets. The May 2026 edition is a midyear update to the December 2025 full forecast. Figures are projections of advertiser investment, not realized actuals, and "algorithm-driven" spend refers to buys where algorithms are significantly involved in the decision. Where this article cites a December 2025 figure (e.g. retail media +14.1%, market-level rates), it is flagged as such; the May 2026 figure is treated as current wherever the two overlap.
Bibliography
dentsu, "Global Ad Spend Forecasts May 2026" (27 May 2026). Link
Marketing-Interactive, "Global ad spend set to surpass US$1 trillion in 2026, APAC leads growth" (4 Dec 2025). Link
WARC, "Forecast: Global ad spend to grow 9.1% in 2026" (15 Jan 2026, via Advanced Television). Link
eMarketer, "Worldwide Ad Spending Forecast 2026." Link
eMarketer, "US Ad Spending 2026." Link