Global Ad Spend Forecast To Drop 10.2% In 2020, Linear TV Ad Spend To Decline 16%

Worldwide linear TV advertising is expected to fall 16% -- $29.9 billion this year -- to $155.6 billion due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the worst decline on record, according to advertising and marketing research company WARC.

Linear TV is projected to recover by only 1.1% in 2021.

Worldwide linear TV represents 27.9% of global advertising spend, the largest global share by a media platform.

Despite strong U.S. presidential campaign spending, the U.S. TV market -- the world's largest -- will sink 0.1% to $54.4 billion in linear TV advertising spend.

By contrast, digital and online video spending will grow 7.9% to $52.7 billion for 2020, and will rise 12.8% next year. Overall global advertising spending is expected to decline 10.2% ($63.4 billion) to $557.3 billion. It is projected to rise 6.7% in 2021 -- meaning that a full recovery of the ad market is not expected until 2022

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Social media will be another strong digital category, up 9.3% to $98.3 billion -- up 12.2% to $110.3 billion next in 2021. It has 18.6% worldwide ad spend share.

Paid search -- the second biggest category after linear TV globally (22% of all ad spend) - will decline 1.9% this year, growing 7% next year. In 2021, it is expected to total $130.6 billion.

North America advertising spend will be down by 4.3% ($9.9 billion) to $221.0 billion in 2021. The region commands 39.6% of global ad spending.

The Asia-Pacific region will drop 9.7% ($18.8 billion) to $174.4 billion.

European ad spend will be 14.5% lower ($21.5 billion) to $127 billion this year.

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