Google, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Amazon have never been so powerful.
Together they accounted for more than $7 in $10 (74%) of global digital ad spending last year, which is 47% of all money spent on advertising over that period. That put them on track to reach a dominant share of the entire advertising market this year.
It’s a marked jump on the influence these companies have over advertising at the onset of the pandemic. In 2020 the “big three” platforms’ share of all global ad spend was 39% and of digital it was 67%, said Ruben Schreurs, group chief product officer at Ebiquity, which crunched the numbers.
The point is a sobering one for any CEO that isn’t Google, Meta and Amazon. Not least because those businesses control so much of what gets sold to advertisers. In fact, the rest of the online ad market is growing at a combined growth rate of 3% year-on-year in comparison, said Schreurs — that’s slower than the rate of inflation, he continued.
So when does this imbalance of power correct itself? If history is any indication, dominant market shares tend to fall, not increase. Why? Things always change. Competition gradually intensifies while governments eventually bare their teeth and dominant shares diminish, said Tom Triscari, an economist at consulting firm Lemonade Projects.“Coke used to have 90% market share until…
