This year, brands will certainly cut $50 billion out of their total advertising budget.

Global advertising spending will fall 8.1% ($ 49.6 billion) to $ 563 billion this year, driven by a sharp decline in investment among key product sectors as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, according to WARC.

New forecasts based on data from 96 markets around the world represent a decrease of $ 96.4 billion from the previous global WARC forecast of 7.1% growth in February 2020.

Traditional media will feel worse than online, with advertising investments that fall this year by $ 51.4 billion (-16.3%). The decrease will be recorded in cinemas (-31.6%), OOH (-21.7%), magazines (-21.5%), newspapers (-19.5%), radio (-16.2%) and TV (-13.8%) except smart-tv.

Internet advertising is also not protected from the break; Internet growth will almost stop (+ 0.6%) in 2020 after a decrease of $ 36.5 billion compared to the February WARC forecast of $ 298.9 billion. It is expected that in social networks (+ 9.8%), online video (+ 5.0%) and online search (+ 0.9%), growth will be recorded, but much slower than previously predicted at that time as classified – in particular, recruiting advertising – will fall by 10.3%.

Facebook’s prospects for the whole year were reduced by $ 5.3 billion. To 11.5% this year, to $ 77.6 billion, while Alphabet revenue is expected to increase by 1.6% to 137.1 billion dollars – by 12.9 billion dollars. Lower than the forecast before the start of growth by 10.4%. 

Despite a significant decline in all directions, the global decline in 2020 will be milder than in 2009, when the advertising market decreased by 12.7% (- $ 60.5 billion).