WPP estimates commerce media spending to overtake TV this year

It’s a sign of advertising’s altered geology. Amazon’s Q3 ad revenues ran just short of $18 billion this year, an increase of 24% on the same period in 2024. According to WPP’s projections, retail media networks – such as those operated by Carrefour, Target or Tesco – account for the majority of the commerce media segment; worth $174.2 billion this year, the company expects growth of 11.3% in 2026.

Retail media networks’ ability “to connect media exposure to ultimate purchase that has been quite attractive to brands over the last several years,” said Kate Scott Dawkins, WPP’s global president of business intelligence and the report’s co-author.

For media buyers across the industry, the figures represent the latest confirmation of a long-term trend. While providers of TV suffer from fragmenting media habits and the demise of monoculture – once central to their market pitch – retailers, banks and travel companies have been able to offer major advertisers the chance to closely tether ads and sales. 

That’s proven to be particularly attractive for the CPG brands that stock retailers’ shelves. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of CPG marketers expected to increase their retail media spending in the second half of 2025, vs. 55% who expected CTV spending to rise, according to a Mediaocean survey published in July.

“The immediate sales results that can be tracked to commerce media make it very appealing and interesting to a lot of clients,” noted media agency Amp’s vp of media, Paula Berkel. “It’s a lot harder to do that with a traditional linear TV buy.”

“Everyone is thirsty and hungry for attribution,” said Danny Weissman, co-founder of indie media agency Obsessed. “There is such a cover-your-ass mentality for marketing teams, and I can’t blame [them]. When you have to report immediate success to stakeholders internally, it’s very fast paced. Budgets are very fragile, and people want to be able to deliver results for their teams.”

WPP Media pegged total global ad spend for 2025 at $1.14 trillion; that’s expected to grow 7.9% including U.S. political ad spending next year.

Search as we know it will slow

Beyond 2026, WPP’s estimates include a prediction that ad spending on search engines will begin to slow after next year. Although 2026 spending on search advertising is expected to hit $244.9 billion — 21.4% of total global ad spend — the company estimated it will grow 10.3% next year before “decelerating” to the “high to mid single digits” in following years.

A consequence of shifting search habits towards social and AI platforms, Scott-Dawkins said retail and social search channels would likely grow much faster than traditional search in the future.

“We’ll continue to see decent growth,” said Scott-Dawkis. “It’s just a matter of how much of that is going to be into the AI side of things, and how much is going to be still in the traditional side.”

“Those other elements will be growing faster than traditional search because they’re [growing] off of smaller bases,” she added.

The British ad giant is now just one of two major marketing companies that still publishes  global ad spending forecasts, alongside Dentsu (IPG’s Magna unit was caught up in its acquisition by Omnicom).