Dentsu has issued its Global Ad Spend Forecasts and revised its forecast for 2024 up to 6.8% to close the year at $772.4 billion USD, thanks to a year of sporting events and elections. Canada is expected to end 2024 with a $11 billion USD ad spend, a 4.2% increase over the previous year. Looking ahead, the agency group projects slower global 5.9% ad spend growth for 2025, although it will still outpace the 3.2% global economic growth. The Americas region is expected to remain the most dynamic region in 2025 with 6.3% growth accounting for 47.0% share of global ad spend.
In Canada the pace of growth is forecasted at 3.6% in 2025 and remain roughly flat for the next three years. Adele Lettau, VP investment and activation for Dentsu Canada says that the most dynamic areas of growth in Canada forecasted for 2025 are search (6%), social (6%), and connected TV (11%).
For paid search, Lettau says the pushback and eventual pause by Google on retiring cookies has driven higher than original forecasted search investment, coupled with easing interest rates. Social media growth will be driven by influencer marketing, which is forecast to have a strong growth in 2025 as many brands are considering this as crucial strategies for their marketing plans, allowing for brands to reach highly targeted audiences through authentic and reliable content.
Looking at CTV, the other fast growing media channel, Lettau says, “Premium video content such as full-episode players and CTV are the most desired formats for their highly viewable and sound on environments. Ad quality is becoming more and more top of mind for advertisers in the video space as they seek out high attention and trusted environments where the risk for brand safety and fraud are low.”
Three top ad spend trends predicted for 2025 by Dentsu Canada include the success and steady growth of retail media networks, which will increase as more industries, such as travel, move towards leveraging first party data. In Canada, this will further fragment digital spend but connect better with audiences.
Live programming will become more important as a way to increase reach and attention. It will continue to drive spend allocations for those channels carrying key events and echo the fragmentation of media partners to cover events.
The continued growth to online shopping and the channels that connect to it, such as social, in Canada means that advertisers and retailers need to consider the impact of shopping periods generated by sales such as Amazon Prime on timing for key campaigns, and not just the traditional periods of Back to School or Holiday.
Lettau adds, “As Canada will have a federal election late in 2025 and will be building towards being a host in the World Cup 2026, this will continue to drive an uptick in media spend across all channels. We’ll be keeping an eye on notable changes in the market, alongside the growth and evolution of AI-informed ad spending coming out of 2024 as businesses increasingly leverage advanced algorithms to optimize their marketing strategies and set new standards for the industry in Canada.”
