US political ad spend is predicted to reach $15.8 billion this year, with the switch in Democratic candidate to Kamala Harris prompting a surge in spending. Photograph: Bloomberg
This is great news for the three companies that dominate the advertising market globally: Meta, Amazon and Google and YouTube-owner Alphabet. This “trifecta” – the leaders in social, retail media and search respectively – is expected to attract 43.6 per cent of all advertising spend, with their share rising to more than 46 per cent by 2026.
More than half of the additional spending on advertising this year is going to Alphabet, Amazon and Meta, according to Warc, while over the past decade those three companies attracted about 70 per cent of the additional money spent on advertising. This represents a huge accumulation of financial power in a relatively short stretch of time.Never mind the vibes, here’s ‘Kamalanomics’
“Legacy media” – which encompasses print publishing, broadcast radio, linear television, cinema and out-of-home advertising – is now collectively clinging on to a quarter of total advertising spend, having recorded a dip in share in each of the last 15 years. The doom-and-gloom isn’t uniform, however, with a surge in US political spending this year likely to result in 1.5 per cent growth in legacy media advertising.