The months-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz remains a serious test of global ad market resilience. WARC Media&#x27;s Alex Brownsell and Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President for Business Intelligence at WPP Media, join WARC&#x27;s Anna Hamill to make sense of complicated dynamics for advertisers in 2026. Guests: Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President for Business Intelligence, WPP Media Alex Brownsell, Head of Content, WARC Media Anna Hamill, Senior Editor - The WARC Podcast Chapters: 00:00 – Intro: WARC Global Ad Spend trends 02:43 – Why ad spend is booming while consumers feel pessimistic 06:39 – Gulf crisis, oil prices &amp; WARC scenario modeling for global ad growth 08:32 – Travel, auto and FMCG: categories most exposed to energy and inflation shocks 09:51 – Regional impact: Gulf, Latin America, Europe, SE Asia, US and China 11:00 – WPP vs WARC forecasts: cross-border advertising, AI investment and big media owners 13:40 – Inflation, pricing power and why the classic CPG playbook is weakening 16:50 – Generative search ads to 2030: search, social and retail media dominance 19:27 – AI gold rush: how advertising is funding big tech and AGI ambitions 21:28 – Future of retail media, AI-driven purchase journeys and resilient news publishers For 40 years, WARC has been providing the marketing industry with rigorous, unbiased evidence and expert effectiveness guidance. The WARC Podcast publishes a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe to The WARC Podcast here: https://www.warc.com/en/warc-podcasts Sign up to daily WARC News for free: https://www.warc.com/en/latest Book a demo: https://www.warc.com/en/subscribe

Economic volatility stress-tests the global advertising market

The WARC Podcast

Welcome back to The WARC Podcast. I'm Anna Hamill. The global advertising economy has weathered many storms over the last 25 years, from the dot-com bubble to the 2008 recession to the COVID pandemic. But the economic impact from the close of the Strait of Hormuz is a serious test of global ad market resilience.

WARC Media's new scenario modelling, built on data from 100 markets and over 2 million data points, stresses three outcomes against a baseline of 11.5% year-on-year global ad spend growth in 2026. In each of these scenarios the total ad market still grows. In fact, global advertising revenue as a share of GDP is at its highest point since 1999.

Under the most severe conditions modelled by WARC in this report, nearly $94 billion in incremental spend disappears over the next two years. However, that damage is likely to be unevenly distributed across category and market. Then there's the impact of what we're seeing in the headlines every day. An increasingly painful energy crisis, price increases, and consumer sentiment hitting multi-year lows. Today I'm joined by two experts to make sense of these complicated dynamics.

Alex Brownsale is Head of Content at WARC Media and returning contributor Kate Scott Dawkins, Global President for Business Intelligence at WPP Media. This week, WPP Media released its this year-next year global forecast, which identifies some crucial trends to watch in the back half of 2026 and beyond. But before we crunch the numbers with them, here's a quick message from today's sponsor.

Today's episode of The Walk Podcast is sponsored by Criteo. Have you noticed the irony of modern performance advertising? The more channels you add, the harder it gets to see what's actually working. Criteo built Go campaigns to solve exactly that.

Economic volatility stress-tests the global advertising market

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Economic volatility stress-tests the global advertising market

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.