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Tariffs are driving a sharp slowdown in US advertising growth. Widespread concern over Trump鈥檚 sweeping trade policies has led to downgraded 2025 ad spend forecasts, with nearly half of advertisers planning budget cuts. Retailers are bracing for margin pressure and softening consumer demand.

Advertisers should map churn cycles and diversify ad spend to align with viewing habits and consumer behavior while prioritizing media plans that follow content, not just platforms.

This growth is mirrored in the US, where our forecast expects influencer marketing spending to rise 15% YoY in 2025, outpacing both social ad growth (12.8%) and overall digital ad growth (11.8%). As holding companies like Publicis Groupe and Havas race to acquire influencer marketing agencies, Omnicom鈥檚 Creo move shows it鈥檚 betting on internal unification rather than outside acquisition.

Under the moderate tariff scenario, total ad spending would reach approximately $407 billion, with only the heavy scenario triggering an actual year-over-year decline in total ad spending. "Even in a heavy tariff scenario, top-line digital ad spending, looking at it from a year-over-year growth standpoint, would still grow 4.5% year-over-year," said our analyst Oscar Orozco. Digital channel divide.

Ad spending projects to hold strong in healthcare and pharma: Here鈥檚 why health and pharma marketers are prioritizing some media channels over others.

The news: LGBTQ+ creators are seeing thousands less in brand deals compared with previous years as broader ad spend cuts impact Pride Month marketing, per Digiday. Creators Ashely and Malori Anthony have noted a massive decrease in Pride Month brand partnerships this year and in 2024.

Room for growth: Global platforms still dominate ad spend, but smaller, country-specific networks are gaining ground. For Gander, that means advertisers can tap into high-engagement communities tied to cities, interests, or regional issues鈥攕paces big platforms often overlook.

Methodology: Estimates are based on the analysis of various elements related to the ad spending market, including macro-level economic conditions, historical trends of the advertising market, historical trends of each medium in relation to other media, reported revenues of major ad publishers, estimates from other research firms, data from benchmark sources, consumer media consumption trends, consumer device

Early testing delivered strong results; Dick鈥檚 Media reported a 300% increase in return on ad spend when using its first-party data on Roku compared with traditional ad models. Our take: Dick鈥檚 sees retail media as a long-term growth engine, and its partnership with Roku should enhance its ability to compete with larger players by combining rich loyalty data with precise streaming insights.

Ad dollars could shift away from search toward other channels if more people rely on genAI answers instead of clicking through ads. That would be especially meaningful in healthcare and pharma, where marketers skew heavily toward search advertising to meet consumers who use the internet to conduct healthcare-specific research.

Click here to view our full forecasts for US programmatic direct nonsocial digital display ad spending and US real-time bidding (RTB) nonsocial ad spending. But PMPs have also gained share of programmatic budgets. In 2020, PMPs and the open exchange each accounted for about half of nonsocial RTB ad spending.

Several factors are contributing to ad spend increases. The growth in ad spend isn鈥檛 coming from a singular source. As Reddit grows in popularity, new ad formats, measurement offerings, and AI tools are making it more appealing to marketers. Reddit is making inroads in social commerce.

Mobile app install ad spending in the US is forecast to reach over $27 billion in 2025, up nearly 11% from last year, per our forecast. Mobile in-app ad spending is projected to grow even faster, rising 12.6% in 2025 to nearly $190 billion. By 2029, mobile will make up nearly 68% of total digital ad spending in the US, climbing from 66% this year.

Companies like Apple resumed spending on the platform after a 15-month pause, while Amazon significantly increased its ad spending on X despite pulling nearly all of its ad spending from the platform in 2024. The change is largely in response to Musk鈥檚 new political power. Brands are hoping to improve relationships with Musk and, in turn, curry favor with the current administration.

The big picture: The digital advertising industry faces a tough 2025, with slowing growth across digital media consumption, ecommerce, and ad spending compared to pre-pandemic and pandemic periods.

Temu effectively cut off its paid Google Shopping ad spend on April 12, according to Tinuiti data, while Shein maintained minimal spending on the platform until April 26, when its share of ad impressions also dropped to 0%. Headwinds are on the horizon.

And platforms that serve as major channels of ad spending aren鈥檛 immune to this issue. Google recently uncovered a large-scale ad fraud scheme that generated millions in ad revenues, validating mitigating ad fraud as one of the top concerns for media investments.

Both companies are increasing ad spend in Europe, especially in the UK and France鈥攁lthough such relief may be short-lived, given that both countries are also considering crackdowns on de minimis imports.

US CPG Industry Ad Spending 2024 (蘑菇AV subscription required). Methodology: Data is from the April 2025 ThinkNow Research "Clicks vs. Carts: 2025 Shoppers Report." 1,500 US adults ages 18+ were surveyed online during March 3-16, 2025.

Consider staggering deals to maintain engagement, increasing ad spend and retargeting mid-event to capture late buyers, and streamlining UX to accommodate more browsing time. Related 蘑菇AV reports:. Amazon Prime Day 2025 (蘑菇AV subscription required). US Amazon Ecommerce Forecast 2025 (蘑菇AV subscription required).

This comes as global ad spending is projected to decline, owing in part to economic uncertainties and continuing tariff anxieties. While we expect Meta鈥檚 ad revenues will continue to rise, we forecast its growth rate to decline to 12.3% YoY in 2025, down from 18.6% in 2024.

Case study: Take Wayfair, for example, which has been increasing its ad spending. The home furnishings retailer said its advertising expenses rose 5% YoY in 2024. Advertising spending equaled 12.4% of the company鈥檚 net revenues last year, up from 11.6% the year before鈥攈ighlighting how even established furnishings players are investing more just to maintain visibility and drive sales.

Even with higher prices resulting from this shift, the majority of US advertisers are unlikely to cut TikTok ad spending entirely unless forced to.