How 8  Big Tech spend  $46.6bn on Ad in 2021, account 6% ad spent globally 

A new WARC analysis of advertising investment by eight major digital platforms has underlined the importance of ‘Big Tech’ to the health of the global ad economy. These findings are published today by WARC, the international marketing intelligence service, as part of its WARC Media suite.

Advertising expenditure by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Baidu, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix and Tencent in 2021 totalled $46.6bn (+49.4% year-on-year), accounting for 6.0% of all ad investment globally. On current trajectory, Big Tech’s share of global ad spend will surpass 10.0% by 2030.

Big Tech’s spend on advertising is also growing faster (+49.4%) than categories such as media and publishing (+34%), technology and electronics (+26%) and retail (+21%). Analysis by WARC found that Big Tech contributed more than a tenth (10.4%) of all global ad spend growth in 2021.

Amazon becomes the world’s biggest-spending advertiser
In 2009, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos infamously asserted that “advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” Fast-forward to 2021 and Amazon invested $16.9bn in ads (+55.0% year-on-year), the most ever spent by a single company within a 12-month period.

However, Amazon’s expenditure model appears to be self-funding: investment in advertising helps Amazon to draw shoppers to its e-commerce platform, which in turn increases the revenue it gains from retail media ads – as well as ad spend on products like Twitch and Freevee.

The second-largest advertiser within Big Tech is Alibaba, which invested $8.8bn (+84.4%) in 2021. Fuelled by China’s flourishing e-commerce market, Alibaba has grown its share of total spend in the Big Tech category from 2.9% in 2014 to 19% in 2021 – exceeding Google-owner Alphabet in total ad investment ($7.9bn, +47.0%) for the first time.

Among the companies analysed by WARC, Microsoft shows the lowest commitment to advertising. It invested $1.5bn in 2021, a sum that has remained stable since 2016. However, this may change in light of the prospective acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard and Microsoft’s growing ambitions in the metaverse space.

Big Tech’s ad spend as a percentage of total sales declines
While Big Tech companies are investing vast sums on advertising in absolute