Amid privacy changes and macroeconomic headwinds, social media will be the channel hurt most by the digital advertising downturn. For 2023, we have reduced our US social network ad spending forecast by $16.21 billion.

In the fourth quarter, YouTube’s ad revenues fell short of expectations, declining nearly 8% YoY. Then, in early February, CEO Susan Wojcicki announced she was stepping down. As the platform gears up to face new challenges, is it the right time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube? Our analyst says no.

Of Microsoft’s $198 billion in revenues last year, only about 6% came from advertising. Could a revamped Bing help build out this revenue stream? It’s hard to imagine, but not impossible. Here are five charts that look at Microsoft’s latest ad moves.

“Disrupt, make noise, get people talking about Tubi the next day.” That was the goal for the campaign, said Greg Hahn, co-founder and chief creative officer of Mischief, the agency behind Tubi’s “interface interruption” and “rabbit hole”-themed Super Bowl ads. We talked to Hahn about Tubi and Mischief’s advertising approach.

From winning “an insane amount of PR coverage” to being nimble enough to strike at the peak of buzz, Aron North, Mint Mobile’s CMO, shares how the ad that had everyone talking came about and what other marketers can learn from his experience.

Digital ad spend will grow the fastest in Latin America this year, with Peru leading the pack, according to our forecast. While Argentina and Chile will also rank high by this measure, none of the three countries will crack the global top 10 for total digital ad spend.

After several years of double-digit increases, worldwide digital ad spending saw growth slow to 8.6% in 2022, for a total of $567.49 billion, according to our forecast. This year, growth will rebound to 10.5%, and spend will reach $626.86 billion.

US ad spending fell 12.1% in December 2022, the sixth consecutive month in which total spending has declined, according to revised data from Standard Media Index’s US Ad Market Tracker. To no one’s surprise, inflation continues to take its toll. But things may not be as bad as we thought.

In response to the shifting advertising landscape, we’ve cut over $5 billion from our US ad spend forecast for 2023, placing it at $278.59 billion. Why the downgrade? Well, for one, last year’s macroeconomic factors are spilling over into this year. And while that may resolve itself in time, there’s another, more permanent issue advertising is facing: privacy changes.

From streaming to ad measurement and privacy, 2023 will be a year of transformation. Here are four changes we expect in the new year.

Ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) viewing will reach more than half of the US population in 2026, up from 41.8% this year, per our forecast.

Despite the Basic With Ads subscription tier being released just two weeks ago, we’re forecasting Netflix will see US ad revenues of $830 million in 2023, growing to $1.02 billion in 2024. It’s an impressive acceleration in ad revenues, but it puts the company behind a few streaming rivals.

“Google is clearly trying to modernize what has been this golden goose, which is their search business, while also trying to modernize the format that they’re able to deliver to users on YouTube with Shorts,” said our analyst Max Willens, following Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings. “We might be at the beginning of an environment where it's tough to build momentum around either of them.”

In the last year, Meta—and the overall US digital ad market—have changed significantly. Here are seven strategies from our “The Future of Meta” report that marketers should embrace in the new year.

WPP, which owns advertising agencies Ogilvy, Wunderman Thompson, and VMLY&R, boosted its guidance this week after reporting a 10.3% increase in revenues.

Mobile ads that cover 80% of the screen receive 6.6 seconds of attention from the average smartphone user. That’s more than double the attention received by ads with 50% screen cover, and about eight times that of ads covering less than 10% of the screen.

Among US citizens ages 18 and older, 60% feel there should be political ad spending limits for groups not affiliated with political candidates. Only 16% think their spending should remain unlimited.

Google this week announced several new advertising features for YouTube across video, audio, and commerce. Here’s what the company announced at Advertising Week New York:

The longer the ad, the more likely US TV viewers will call it unreasonable. And only half of TV viewers who recently watched the shortest ads—less than 30 seconds—felt the length was reasonable. If viewers must watch ads, they want them to be as short as possible.

While other publishers have struggled in the wake of Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency (ATT), Apple Search Ads has tripled its market share of mobile advertising since the first half of 2020, according to AppsFlyer’s latest “Performance Index.”