On the surface, the global ad industry appears to be in rude health. GroupM upwardly revised its This Year Next Year global ad revenue forecast for 2024 and expects it to surpass $1tn for the first time – and that’s excluding US political advertising, which itself totalled $15.1bn.

In the UK, despite uncertainty regarding the country's political and economic future, the ad market grew 8.3%, with further 7% growth now expected for 2025.

But, of course, there are numerous unpredictabilities next year, such as around how a new Donald Trump administration could impact global trade or pursue Big Tech regulation. Meanwhile, most ad growth is being driven by just five companies: Google, Meta, Amazon, ByteDance and Alibaba — suggesting a consolidation of ad revenue into fewer, bigger hands.

Kate Scott-Dawkins is GroupM's global president of business intelligence and author of the This Year Next Year report.

In conversation with Jack Benjamin, Scott-Dawkins explained that advertisers have grown accustomed to managing uncertainty over the past five years and that growth drivers such as retail media and streaming TV, as well as an influx of new AI-based startups, are likely to provide a boost to future ad spending.

"The uncertainty that advertisers are dealing with has existed and will continue to exist into next year," she said. "The advertising economy is going to continue despite that."

Scott-Dawkins will be presenting further details from This Year Next Year at The Media Leader's Future of TV Advertising Global conference in London next week.