Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta now control a combined 56.1% of all advertising spend outside of China.
LONDON — Three technology giants are capturing more than half of the world’s advertising revenue, even as the global market surges to record heights despite a fragile broader economy, according to a report.
Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta now control a combined 56.1% of all advertising spend outside of China, a dominance that is fundamentally decoupling the ad market from traditional economic cycles.
The findings, published in WARC Media’s Global Ad Trends report, reveal that while global growth reached 8.9% this year to hit $1.19 trillion, the vast majority of those “spoils” are being harvested by a tiny elite of digital platforms.
The concentration of power is expected to intensify, with the trio’s market share projected to rise to 58.0% in 2026.
“The ad market used to help tell the story of the economy as a whole, but a structural shift has taken place,” said Alex Brownsell, head of content at WARC Media.
“Advertising has broken away from the economic cycle and behaves in a way that doesn’t feel reflective of the real economy.”
This “new normal” creates a stark paradox: ad spend is racing ahead at a time when real wages have stagnated and inflation has eroded consumer purchasing power in many developed markets. WARC researchers noted that Big Tech’s “self-reinforcing flywheel”—driven by massive investments in AI-driven optimization and first-party data—is siphoning incremental dollars away from the “open web,” where traditional display advertising is in decline.
The financial scale of this shift is massive. Total global advertising is forecast to reach $1.3 trillion next year, eventually hitting $1.4 trillion in 2027. That figure represents a doubling of the market size since the pandemic and is equivalent to roughly $150 spent for every person on Earth.
For traditional brands, the landscape has become increasingly difficult to navigate. Many large advertisers are reporting growth driven by price increases rather than sales volume.
In response, marketers are pivoting back to basics; a survey of over 1,000 practitioners found that 51% intend to increase investment in brand-building to maintain loyalty as consumer demand remains brittle.
As the industry moves toward 2026, the report suggests the divide will only grow. With Big Tech holding the keys to creative automation and advanced analytics, the ad market is no longer a mirror of global health, but a high-tech ecosystem dominated by the few.
