Consumer Goods Ad Intensity Rises to 12.5% as Big Tech Pulls Back

A market growing fast, led by fewer big brands

The global advertising market is growing at its fastest pace in years. Yet many of the world's best-known brand owners now put a smaller share of their revenue into ads than they did before the pandemic. Packaged-goods companies are the main exception. A new WARC Media report, Global Ad Trends: The Cost of Being Seen, finds that the largest consumer goods marketers have raised their advertising intensity, while big technology companies, automakers, payments networks and several retailers have let their ad budgets fall behind revenue growth.12

The report helps explain a clear split in the industry. Total ad spending is growing quickly, but more of that growth now comes from somewhere other than the large enterprise advertisers that agencies and media owners have relied on for decades.

What the numbers show

WARC studied 25 large U.S.-based advertisers. Their combined ad-to-sales ratio, meaning advertising spend divided by revenue, fell from 6.1% in 2019 to 5.5% in 2025.2 That is not a retreat in dollar terms. The group's combined ad spend rose 56% over the period, but revenue grew 73%, so the ratio slipped.9 All of the coverage agrees on this reading: brands are not cutting advertising. Their budgets are simply growing more slowly than their sales.47

Big Tech accounts for most of the decline. Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Netflix cut their combined ratio from 13% to 7.4% between 2019 and 2025, while their revenue rose 146%, from $379 billion to $931 billion.2 WARC estimates that if those four had kept their 2019 intensity, they would have spent $121 billion on advertising in 2025, about $52 billion more than they actually did.410 Subtracting one figure from the other puts their actual 2025 ad spend at roughly $69 billion.

Consumer goods companies moved the other way. WARC looked at Coca-Cola, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, Nike, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. Their combined ratio rose from 11.6% in 2023 to 12.5% in 2025, and over the full 2019–2025 period their ad spend grew 36% against revenue growth of 29%.1 Five of the six raised their ratios, and PepsiCo stayed roughly flat.5 Marketing Dive put this as every company except PepsiCo raising its ratio, while other outlets said PepsiCo was broadly flat. Both descriptions say the same thing.17

The remaining 15 advertisers, which are neither tech nor consumer goods, gave a mixed result. Weighted by revenue, their average ratio was flat to slightly up, but 10 of the 15 cut their ratios.2 Ford fell from 2.3% to 1.6% and General Motors from 2.7% to 1.7%. Visa dropped from 4.8% to 4.2% and Mastercard from 5.6% to 4%. McDonald's slid from 1.7% to 1.3% and Target from 2% to 1.4%.9 Marriott, Booking Holdings, Eli Lilly and The Home Depot also declined. Amazon and Yum! Brands held steady, and only Walmart, Starbucks and Expedia went up.4

Why consumer goods companies are spending more

WARC points to three forces behind the split: weak sales, budgets moving from one line to another, and the difference between owning attention and renting it.2

The first is simple arithmetic. If a company keeps ad spending steady while sales stall or fall, its ratio goes up without any new commitment.9 Marketing Dive described the consumer goods behavior as a deliberate choice: these companies are leaning on advertising to defend market share in a downturn, after years of post-pandemic inflation and shoppers who watch prices closely.1 Nike is the clearest example. It is trying to turn its business around against tougher competition in categories like running.1

The second force is an accounting change, and it deserves more attention than it usually gets. Money that used to sit with sales teams as trade and shopper marketing is moving into retail media, so it now shows up as advertising.2 This means part of the rise in packaged-goods ad intensity comes from reclassifying spending rather than adding new money. Marketing Report made the same point, noting that these shifts can raise reported ad spend even when the real change is in how budgets are allocated.4

The third force is structural. Companies like Alphabet and Meta own huge audiences, so they can grow without paying others to reach consumers.2 Marketing Dive put it sharply: these platforms now control the consumer attention that other brands must pay to reach.1

The same pattern outside the U.S.

The consumer goods push is not limited to American multinationals. In India, Nestlé India raised its advertising and marketing spending 46% year over year in the September quarter. That is more than double its 20.5% revenue growth, and the company pointed to food inflation as a reason to keep investing behind its brands.8 Media buyers told The Economic Times that PepsiCo, Colgate, Parle and Dabur have told agencies to expect sustained spending, and Marico described its promotion investment as up significantly.8 Regulatory pressure is adding to it. India's food safety regulator has sent more than 150 notices over misleading claims and labeling, which pushes brands toward advertising focused on trust.8 Much of the new money goes to influencers. Festive influencer spending in India is estimated at ₹900 crore in 2026, up 29%.8

The two reports are not directly comparable. One is a multi-year ratio study of six global companies, and the other is quarterly earnings commentary from Indian companies. Still, they point the same way: packaged-goods marketers facing cost pressure and nervous consumers are spending to protect volume rather than cutting back to protect margins.

Where the money is going

The intensity report came out a week after WARC's Q3 2026 forecast, which projects global ad spend will grow 11.9% this year to $1.34 trillion, following 10% growth in both 2024 and 2025.14 Social media is the fastest-growing channel, forecast to rise 21.3% to $394.6 billion and to pass $500 billion by 2028.15 Search is forecast to grow 14.2% to $295.7 billion and retail media 14.3% to $202.1 billion. Together, those three channels account for 66.4% of global spend, rising to 70% by 2028.19 By PPC Land's own estimate, not WARC's, the three channels capture about 92% of this year's increase in ad spending.12 Linear TV, by contrast, is forecast to grow just 1.2% and then shrink in 2027.16

The money is also concentrated in a few companies. Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are on track to take 59.7% of global ad spend outside China in 2026, or $659.6 billion, rising to 61.5% by 2028.18 Meta's own results show the momentum: advertising revenue rose 27% to $59.36 billion in the second quarter of 2026.11

Not every forecaster is this optimistic. WARC's 11.9% figure is up sharply from the 8.9% it projected in June, and WPP Media's midyear forecast put 2026 growth at only 4.4%. The two firms use different baselines, so their figures cannot be compared directly.12 The IAB's survey-based U.S. outlook sides with WARC, raising its 2026 growth estimate to 12.3%.12 The 2026 Olympics, the FIFA World Cup and the U.S. midterm elections all add to this year's demand.19

Why it matters: a two-speed market

WARC calls this a "two-speed marketplace." Alex Brownsell, WARC Media's head of content, argued that platform spending by smaller businesses and cross-border e-commerce sellers is growing far faster than investment by big brands, with major implications for agencies and vendors that serve enterprise clients.5 Marketing Dive reported that tech companies spending less on ads has already hurt several agency networks.1

Put the two reports together and the conclusion is clear. The record-breaking headline growth is mostly not coming from the Fortune 500. It comes from a long tail of small advertisers buying self-serve ads on social, search and retail platforms, and that money mostly goes to the same few companies that are cutting their own ad intensity. Big Tech wins on both sides: it collects the fastest-growing ad budgets and has less need to buy attention for itself.

For publishers, broadcasters and holding companies, the consumer goods surge is real but limited. Six companies raising their ratios cannot make up for automakers, payments networks, restaurant chains and tech platforms letting theirs fall. Much of the extra packaged-goods money is also going to retailers' own ad networks, not to traditional media. WARC itself stresses that brands are not abandoning advertising.1 The more important question is whether marketers that still rent attention can keep paying more for it while the companies that own the audiences grow faster than anyone else.