"This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It's available to Digiday+ members. More from the series → This is a bonus behind-the-scenes look at our conversations with executives for Digiday's 2025 Media Agency Report, which examined the current and future state of media agencies, from the perspective of total client spending and spending by media channel, and delved into the impact of agentic AI on the agency landscape."
"[Ad spending] should be up, but it's going to be artificially driven by things like the World Cup and the Olympics. Those have a tendency to push investment up. The best we can tell, it looks like it would be moderate growth if you took that out. There is still a lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions about major countries as it relates to tariffs. We've seen some consumers and some companies pull forward spending."
Executives expect 2026 advertising investment to increase, with much of the rise concentrated around major international sports events such as the World Cup and the Olympics. Underlying market growth appears moderate when those events are excluded. Tariff uncertainty and broader macroeconomic questions create ambiguity about sustained spend later in the year. Some clients and consumers have pulled spending forward in response to uncertain conditions. A focus group of seven senior media agency executives from holding company and independent agencies provided first‑person accounts of client spending, media channel allocations, and the potential impact of agentic AI on agency workflows.
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