The World's Biggest Brands Are Quietly Spending Less on Ads
Updated: 1 day ago
WARC's Media Global Ad Trends data, reported 15 October 2026, found the combined ad-to-sales ratio of 25 global giants fell from 6.1% in 2019 to 5.5% in 2025; ad spend rose 56% but revenue rose 73%, and had the 2019 ratio held they would have spent $52bn (GBP39.3bn) more.
The Finding
WARC's Media Global Ad Trends data, reported on 15 October 2026, lands an uncomfortable truth for the ad industry: the world's biggest brands are spending proportionally less on advertising than they used to.
The combined ad-to-sales ratio of 25 global giants fell from 6.1% in 2019 to 5.5% in 2025. Ad spend did grow, by 56%, but revenue grew faster, by 73%, so advertising is claiming a smaller slice of each dollar earned.
The scale of the gap is striking. Had the 2019 ratio simply held, these 25 companies would have spent an extra $52bn (GBP39.3bn) on advertising in the period, a sum that reframes the quiet drift as a structural shift.
Where the Pressure Is Sharpest
Technology firms led the retreat. Their ad-to-sales ratio dropped 13% to 7.4%, a notable move from the companies that have spent the past decade defining growth-through-marketing and teaching everyone else to spend.
The pattern suggests efficiency, not retreat. Spending less to sell more is, on paper, a story of marketing getting better at its job, with improved targeting, owned channels and retail media doing more of the work for less.
But it carries a long-term warning. A falling ad-to-sales ratio can quietly erode the brand investment that underpins future pricing power and resilience, and the effects rarely show up in the quarter they are cut, which is exactly what makes the trade so tempting and so risky.
The Marketing Minute Read
We see a 'short-term efficiency, long-term fragility' trade in these numbers. When giants let advertising shrink as a share of revenue, they are banking present efficiency against future brand strength, and that bill tends to arrive later with interest.
The $52bn figure is the headline, but the direction is the real story. If the biggest, most data-rich advertisers are trimming proportional spend, mid-market brands often follow, usually without the targeting sophistication that justified the cut in the first place.
There is an opportunity hidden here too. When category leaders under-invest in brand, challengers who hold their nerve on share of voice can buy relative salience more cheaply than usual, because the cost of being noticed falls when rivals go quiet.
What Businesses Should Do
Track your ad-to-sales ratio as a strategic metric, not just a budget line. A quietly falling ratio can signal under-investment in future demand even while this year's sales look perfectly healthy.
Separate efficiency from erosion. Spending less because targeting improved is healthy; spending less because brand budgets were simply the easiest thing to cut is not, and the two can look identical on a spreadsheet.
Consider leaning in when rivals pull back. Share of voice bought during a category-wide pullback tends to be cheaper and more impactful, so a disciplined brand can turn everyone else's caution into its own advantage.
Above all, hold the long view in front of the board. The reason the ad-to-sales ratio drifts down is that cutting it never hurts this quarter, only future ones, which makes it the easiest saving to justify and the most dangerous to normalise. The 25 giants in WARC's data can absorb a thinning brand for a while on sheer scale; smaller brands living or dying on salience usually cannot, and should think very hard before copying a trend that rewards the biggest players most. The question every marketer should put to their own numbers is simple: are we spending less because we have genuinely got more efficient, or because brand was the line nobody fought to defend?
Quick FAQ
What did WARC's ad-to-sales data show?
WARC found the combined ad-to-sales ratio of 25 global giants fell from 6.1% in 2019 to 5.5% in 2025. Ad spend rose 56% while revenue rose 73%, so advertising took a smaller share of each dollar earned.
How much less are big brands spending on ads?
Had the 2019 ad-to-sales ratio held, the 25 companies would have spent an extra $52bn (GBP39.3bn) over the period. Technology firms cut hardest, dropping 13% to a 7.4% ratio.
Spending less to sell more looks like a win until you remember what a falling ad-to-sales ratio really is: borrowing from tomorrow's brand strength to flatter today's margin. The $52bn gap is efficiency for the giants and an opening for everyone else. When leaders pull back, challengers should lean in. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
A quietly falling ad-to-sales ratio can be future brand fragility disguised as efficiency.
Is your category's spending discipline genuine efficiency, or brand investment being quietly eroded?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: WARC, Marketing Week, Campaign
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
