Emarketer puts global generative-ai advertising spend at $18.4 billion this year, up from $4.2…
emarketer puts global generative-ai advertising spend at $18.4 billion this year, up from $4.2 billion in 2024, and industry trackers say roughly 40% of digital video ads are now made by ai. wpp just folded generative search into its books and says that channel alone will take 21.8% of global ad revenue in 2026.
the creative industry’s fastest-growing medium is one where nobody remembers who made the ad.
Context
WPP Media's midyear forecast (Jun 16, 2026) says traditional search and generative search together will account for 21.8% of total advertising revenue in 2026. Digiday reports generative search is just 1.9% of search ad revenue this year, about $301 million, though the fastest growing area.
EMARKETER's May 2026 forecast puts US AI ad spending at $32 billion this year and above $68 billion by 2030.
The 21.8% in WPP's forecast covers traditional and generative search combined, not generative search alone, whose share is 1.9% of search ad revenue per Digiday. The $18.4 billion global figure, the $4.2 billion in 2024 and the 40% of digital video ads made by AI were not seen in the sources read, so unsupported here, not refuted. The EMARKETER figure read is $32 billion for US AI ad spending. 'Nobody remembers who made the ad' is the author's opinion.
Related work
- Campaign: WPP Media, AI search ad revenue set to hit $100B at record speed ↗Jun 16, 2026; generative search a standalone category.
- EMARKETER: US AI advertising forecast 2026 ↗Jun 4, 2026.
- EMARKETER: AI ad spending will more than double by 2030 ↗May 22, 2026.
Watch next
- Find an EMARKETER or other source for the 18.4 billion dollar global figure.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 1 October 2026 at 15:55 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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