Advertising’s first trillion-dollar year
Global ad spend surpassed the trillion-dollar mark for the first time ever in 2024, thanks to a 10.5% growth rate, according to WARC. That’s both the strongest growth in 6 years and the largest increase in absolute dollar value ever — $104B in incremental advertising spend worldwide — if we disregard the 2021 post-Covid recovery.
So yeah: marketers are competing in a super-heated ecosystem.
And just to turn up that thermostat even more, Q4 was the hottest part of the hottest year on record, with 30% of the year’s ad spend: a staggering $324 billion.
But we know that a good chunk of that holiday quarter spending is not traditional user acquisition. It’s retail and shopping: gifts and personal indulgences. User acquisition is a little different: it tends to be smarter spend. And that means many mobile growth experts spend in Q2 and Q3 when it’s cheaper, and ease back on the throttle in Q4 when prices jump.
So while UA spend was up massively in 2024 overall, Q4 was down 24.5% compared to Q3. We’ll see that jump all back up again in Q1, and likely peak in Q2 and Q3.
2025 will be another massive year for mobile
2024 was huge. 2025 is set to be another massive year for mobile marketers.
Competition and anti-trust authorities all over the world are cracking open the App Store and Google Play. New channels like CTV, podcasting, retail media, and (yes) even social media are seeing the largest percentage increases in spend. Rewarded/incentivized ad networks are growing fast. The winds of change are in the air.
Here’s what we’re seeing in the data. Scroll through this report for more details:
- Hello ChatGPT: custom and organic sources like ChatGPT skyrocketed
- Web spend jumped massively in Q4 at the expense of iOS and Android
- In fact, from January to December, web ad spend jumped 54.39% (!!)
- CPIs jumped 60% for apps (as opposed to games)
- IPMs cratered (installs per thousand ad views)
- ATT opt-ins stayed relatively high
- Small ad networks gained both the most growth and the most new advertisers
- Casual game players are 3-4X more valuable to advertisers than Hyper casual players
- CTR was up for games but sharply down for apps
Source: Singular
