WPP Raises 2026 Global Ad Forecast to 1.3 Trillion Dollars as CTV Grows 21.5 Percent
WPP Media's June 2026 midyear update lifts its global advertising growth forecast to 8.9 percent year over year, a 1.8 percentage point upgrade from December, with streaming and CTV the fastest-growing U.S. format at 21.5 percent while linear TV contracts 8.6 percent. The top five ad sellers — Google, Meta, ByteDance, Amazon, and Alibaba — now absorb 58 percent of global spend, and generative search advertising is projected to grow from 5.1 billion dollars in 2026 to over 100 billion dollars by 2030. Europe's comparatively muted 6.9 percent growth is explicitly attributed to energy inflation from the 2026 Iran conflict, against the U.S. market's 11.9 percent expansion excluding political spending.