Commerce media will surpass TV ad spend globally for the first time next year as digital climbs to 84% of the global advertising market, according to WPP Media’s latest advertising forecast, released late Sunday.
In its This Year Next Year 2025 End-of-Year Forecast, WPP Media estimates that commerce media will reach $178.2 billion in global ad revenue in 2025, overtaking TV advertising globally at $171.1 billion. Streaming’s share of TV revenue will rise from 26.2% to 29.5% over the same period.
According to Kate Scott-Dawkins, global president of business intelligence at WPP Media and author of the report, commerce media, which is both performance-driven and measurable, is becoming “very, very attractive” to brands.
At the same time, despite the emergence of AI search, traditional search budgets remain resilient globally and in the U.S. WPP expects search spend—captured within its “intelligence” category—to reach $244.9 billion in 2025, up 10.2% year over year, with similar growth projected for 2026.
Scott-Dawkins said traditional search should maintain mid-to-high single-digit growth through the decade, though the mix will gradually shift as AI-driven models account for a larger share of the category.
Another forecast on U.S. ad spend from analyst firm Madison & Wall., released Sunday, also found search budgets remain “largely insulated from AI-related disruption,” adding that AI has not meaningfully dented search revenues for legacy platforms.
WPP Media plans to begin reporting AI search revenue in its “intelligence” bucket starting in 2026, reflecting early ad offerings from platforms like OpenAI, as well as AI models within existing search products. But for now, both forecasts suggest AI is reshaping how people discover products more quickly than it is reshaping where marketers spend their search budgets.
Forecast upgrades
Both firms raised their forecasts for ad spend growth in 2026, as a stronger-than-expected ad market shapes up globally and in the U.S.
WPP Media expects global advertising revenue to grow 8.8% in 2025, an upgrade from its June outlook of 6% growth. Global ad spend will then slow to 7.1% in 2026, but surpass $1.2 trillion.
Scott-Dawkins attributed the optimistic outlook for 2025 to resilient consumer spending in the face of tariffs and the growth of the AI sector. “Some of the biggest companies in the world sell advertising,” she said. “It is important to the economy. It is important to funding this AI revolution.”
Madison & Wall, for its part, forecasts 11% U.S. ad spend growth in 2025, excluding political spending—an upgrade from an earlier 3.6% growth projection—after ad spend increased 13% year-over-year in Q3, its fastest pace since early 2022.
For 2026, Madison & Wall projects U.S. ad growth will be between 6.6% and 8.6%, excluding political, depending on economic factors. Growth will be strongest in the first half of the year—boosted by the Winter Olympics—before steadily decelerating throughout.
