Nearly every country in the world will see slower growth in total ad spending and digital ad spending than it did last year, but the comparison is an unfair one because 2021 was abnormal. The outlook is mostly bright.

Total ad spending in France and Germany will fall this year, as a result of the pandemic. Traditional media will suffer most; digital ad spend will rise marginally, to €4.93 billion ($5.51 billion) in France and €7.38 billion ($8.27 billion) in Germany.

It gobbled up large swaths of worldwide digital ad spending, and its billions-strong user base represented a formidable challenge to companies that thought they, too, deserved a piece of the action. Now, the company known as Meta Platforms is on the defensive: losing users, moving to keep its ad business from losing even more steam, and retrenching its efforts to promote the metaverse.

Advertising feels the economic squeeze: The industry lost 2,400 jobs last month despite an overall employment increase and record digital spending.

At Insider Intelligence, our forecasting team is constantly analyzing historical data, combing through insights from thousands of data sources, and reacting to industry forces to predict where markets and segments are heading. Peter Newman, senior forecasting analyst, worked on our latest forecast for US digital ad spending in Q1. He tells us how the recent market turmoil, supply chain issues, and economic uncertainty could impact the numbers in our forecast.

Data from Blue Dollar Argentina, a company that tracks the cost of buying and selling a physical dollar bill on the informal market, shows that the dollar was trading at a figure of more than 1.5 times that of the official exchange rate during the week of March 29, 2021.

After an inconsistent year for digital ad spending in 2020, every industry in the US will increase their outlays in 2021. The retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), and entertainment industries will provide the biggest boosts, driving up overall digital ad spending by 25.5%.

Pharma’s digital advertising spending (targeted to consumers) topped $9.53 billion last year, per Insider Intelligences’s estimates. This means US healthcare digital ad spending made up 7.1% of all US digital ad dollars in 2020, which is higher than industries like media (4.7%) and travel (2.4%).

The consumption of at-home media and entertainment thrived amid the coronavirus pandemic, but the total shutdown of live events and the pause on film and TV production will cause digital ad spending to decline in 2020.

For companies that sell to both businesses and consumers: Is the creative or call to action in the advertisement focusing on a business use case? If so, that would be B2B advertising. Of course, there are companies that sell to both businesses and consumers and therefore advertise to both audience groups.

Retail media will benefit from an overall increase in digital ad spending in the region. Next year, we forecast digital ad spending in Latin America will rise by 14.5% to $12.53 billion and account for nearly half (47.1%) of the regional ad market. Retail media is likely to see a “halo effect” of an increase in ad buys as a result.

Retail Media Grabs 1 in 8 Digital Ad Dollars. Last year, advertisers increased their spending on retail media by nearly 50% year over year (YoY) in the US. In March 2021, we forecast that ad spending in the ecommerce channel—a close proxy for digital retail media—would grow by 27.8% YoY to reach $23.92 billion in 2021, or 1 in 8 digital ad dollars.

That was supercharged during the lockdown and was illustrated by the drop in ad spending overall while digital ad spending rose. Social platforms and video placements will become increasingly important channels to consumers. Shallow “cause marketing” is never a good look.

The pandemic has greatly affected the distribution of digital ad spending across industries. The bottom fell out of the travel industry, as will ad spending in the sector, while retail will consolidate its dominant position in digital ad spend this year.

In February, iHeartMedia said it would buy Triton Digital, a company that provides similar podcast ad tech and measurement services. We expect iHeartMedia’s US podcast ad revenues to increase to $347.0 million by the end of 2023. The most common way for marketers to purchase podcast inventory is by buying audience segments.

Amid unprecedented recessionary headwinds caused by the coronavirus pandemic, China’s total ad spending will downshift considerably, but remain in positive territory at 0.4% growth. This will make it the only national market we cover to see net growth this year. Digital ad spending in China, meanwhile, will grow by 5.0%.

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

Anne Hunter, head of product marketing at consumer insights platform DISQO, noted that many of those trying to simply replace the cookie are “ignoring consumers wishes not to be tracked by companies they have never heard of. When building a single-source panel, you must start with the consumer in mind and get their permission to provide insights.

As social distancing continues, even companies that have shunned a move to digital are having to fall in line—incumbent wealth managers included. To embark on their digital transformation journey, wealth managers can seek out the support of the growing ecosystem of innovative vendors to help revamp every layer of the tech stack.

This will push mobile’s share of digital ad spend to 68.0%, the first time mobile represented more than two-thirds of digital ad spending. Pre-pandemic growth should return in 2021, but the increases will come from a lower base. Mobile ad spending will increase 22.5% in 2021 and reach $161.49 billion by 2024—but this will still be nearly $6 billion shy of our pre-pandemic estimate.