WINTERBERRY GROUP PREDICTS SOLID GROWTH IN ITS ‘ANNUAL OUTLOOK’ FOR U.S. AD, MARKETING and DATA SPEND IN 2025 – WITH DIGITAL, CTV ACCELERATION, DECLINE IN LINEAR

-Connected Commerce, Evolving Tech Stack are Top Areas of Focus for Advertisers Seeking Accurate Measurement and Attribution to Business Outcomes; Generative AI To Boost Content Media Spend -

NEW YORK – The transformation of the U.S. advertising, marketing and data landscape is accelerating, according to an annual report from the strategic consultancy Winterberry Group – with media expenditures predicted to top $585 billion – 6.1-percent growth over 2024 – with marked shifts from linear television and many offline channels to largely digital, data-centric channels fueled by ad tech, analytics, and AI [artificial intelligence] investments.  

By the end of 2025, offline channels overall will decline by an estimated 5.5 percent year over year, while online marketing spend will grow by 12.3 percent – with data, analytics and data infrastructure spending on all channels posting 6.0-percent growth, Winterberry Group predicts.  U.S. economic expansion as seen in 2.5-percent Gross Domestic Product increase, helping to fuel growth. 

U.S. Online and Offline Marketing Spend, 2022-2025. Source: Winterberry Group, Outlook for Advertising, Marketing and Data 2025, January 2025.

Both the 2025 predictions and 2024 year in review are embodied in the report, “Outlook for Advertising, Marketing and Data 2025: Transformation Accelerates” released today and announced, for the 19^th consecutive year, during a Marketing Club of New York function. 

“There are significant business drivers here – fueled by data and tech investments,” study author Bruce Biegel, senior managing partner, Winterberry Group, said. “We see both connected commerce – the melding together of search, social, display, and retail ad networks with consumer and B2B transactions – and investments in the ad tech stack driven by data insights and generative AI – as being central to these transformative shifts in media spend.”

The report also shows that U.S. ad spend in 2024 grew by 11 percent – and 8.7 percent if excluding political advertising for Election 2024.  The latter was nearly three times the corresponding growth in U.S. GDP last year.  Last year’s market spending spree buoyed channels such as direct mail and linear television that are predicted to see declines this year, Winterberry Group reports.  A preceding Winterberry Group report issued last month shows that direct mail advertising is becoming value-driven, rather than volume-driven.

Among selected additional findings from the report:

• DIGITAL DOMINANCE | In 2024, U.S. digital marketing expenditures reached $360.9 billion – more than 65 percent of total online and offline spending combined. In 2020, when COVID-19 fully broke out, online marketing’s total expenditure share was 57 percent.  In 2025, online marketing’s corresponding share will exceed an estimated 69 percent – surpassing $405 billion.
  
  Estimated U.S. Online Marketing Spend, 2025. Source: Winterberry Group, Outlook for Advertising, Marketing and Data 2025, January 2025.
• HOTTEST MEDIA CATEGORIES ONLINE | Search, social, CTV, video and influencer marketing each posted double-digit growth in 2024 – with a repeat performance expected in 2025. 
• CTV v. LINEAR – RISING AND FALLING | CTV advertising expenditures reached $28.8 billion in 2024 – compared to $58.9 billion for linear television (broadcast and cable). In 2025, CTV ad revenue is expected to jump 15.8 percent to $33.4 billion, while linear TV revenue will decline by 19.3 percent, falling to $47.5 billion.  At some point – Winterberry Group estimates in 2027 -- CTV will be the larger.
• ‘DATA LAYER’ INVESTMENT IS STRONG | U.S. marketing spend on data, data services and data infrastructure grew by 10 percent to reach $25.0 billion – helped by data layer investments and the U.S. General Election. Data services include identity resolution, analytics, measurement, attribution and data layer integration. Data infrastructure includes data management and collaboration platforms, among them privacy-enhancing technologies such as “clean rooms.” 
• AI AUTOMATION IS INCREASING CONTENT SPEND | It may be paradoxical, but investments in generative AI and machine learning, while automating content creation, is seeing organizations reallocate rather than reduce budgets – with an emphasis on producing content faster while maintaining quality and brand consistency.  
• CONNECTED COMMERCE POWERHOUSE | Marketing expenditures on connected commerce (social, search, display and first-party-data-driven retail media networks) grew by 18.7 percent per year from 2021 to 2025, rising cumulatively from $56.7 billion in 2021 to an estimated $112.6 billion by the end of 2025. Retail media networks account for two-thirds of such commerce.
• TRADESHOW AND EXPERIENTIAL SPONSORSHIPS | Tradeshow and event advertising, and experiential and sponsorship advertising, have fully recovered from the COVID crisis – as measured in expenditures. Both vehicles – especially important to business-to-business marketers – are expected to surpass $25 billion and $22 billion in 2025, respectively.

“The tech stack is emerging as a single provider of intelligence and customer truth, but it is one built with hybrid solutions rather than a single platform,” Biegel said. “Increasingly, generative AI is diminishing the line between content and audience data, and intelligence is enabling mixed media modeling across channels.”

Results of the full study, as a PDF, are available for download from Winterberry Group: https://winterberrygroup.com/marketing-advertising-data-outlook-presentation-2025

ABOUT WINTERBERRY GROUP

Winterberry Group is a growth consultancy specializing in the intersecting disciplines of marketing, advertising, technology, data and analytics. We collaborate with stakeholders across those ecosystems—agencies, service providers, technology developers, brands, publishers and investor groups—leveraging deep industry expertise to build actionable strategies that spur growth and drive the creation of real and lasting stakeholder value. Learn more at winterberrygroup.com. 

Media Contact:
Brittany Meeks
Winterberry Group
bmeeks@winterberrygroup.com