WPP’s GroupM has predicted that total worldwide marketing service expenditures will exceed $1tr for the first time, despite trimming its 2016 forecast.

 

When combined with other marketing services, the 2017 ad volume prediction of $552bn pushes total marketing expenditure over the $1tr threshold, despite a slowdown in China and Brazil leading to a lower 2016 growth estimate of 4%, down from 4.5%.

China’s growth has been revised down from 9.1% to 6.6% but GroupM still estimates it to reach 7.0% in 2017, keeping the region amongst the top growing large markets – despite its increase no longer being in double digits. With this in mind, the US has superseded China as the region expected to lead contribution in global ad growth, revised up from 2.7% to 3.1% – a position China has held since 2007.

Brazil’s growth has crashed from a predicted 7% to 1% due to the economic crisis.

“At this time, there is no tangible evidence of a Brexit effect in macro indicators nor budgeting decisions,” commented GroupM futures director Adam Smith. “However, in the next six months to a year, it is likely companies will invest less.

“Job creation, wage growth and productivity will be lower than it otherwise might have been. This is a difference of degree, not magnitude. There is no evidence of a Brexit-driven recession at the time of this writing, and though some have deferred 2016 advertising investments, worst-case we still see that UK advertising growth will reach 4.5% this year, propelled exclusively by the growth of digital.

“Our base case remains 6.3%, which we will revise as usual in November.”