The world’s biggest advertisers are spending more on advertising than ever — and a shrinking share of their revenue to do it. New research from WARC Media finds that across 25 of the largest US-based brand owners, the combined ad-to-sales ratio has fallen from 6.1 per cent in 2019 to 5.5 per cent in 2025. Their combined ad spend rose 56 per cent over the period, but revenue rose faster, up 73 per cent. For media sellers and agencies, the message is that enterprise budgets are growing slower than the market they are supposed to be driving.
The exception proves the rule. Consumer goods companies — buffeted by softening sales growth and moving trade budgets into measured media — raised their ad-to-sales ratio from 11.6 per cent in 2023 to 12.5 per cent last year, with collective ad spending up 36 per cent since 2019 against revenue growth of 29 per cent. Retail media has been a major beneficiary of that shift. “We are operating in a two-speed marketplace,” said Alex Brownsell, head of content at WARC Media. The expansion of digital platform spend by smaller businesses and cross-border e-commerce sellers is “by far outpacing growth in ad investment by big brands,” with major implications for the agencies and vendors that live in the enterprise market.
Tech’s retreat is the agencies’ problem
The sharpest pullback comes from the companies that print the money. Technology firms including Alphabet and Meta have shrunk their ad-to-sales ratio from 13 per cent in 2019 to 7.4 per cent in 2025, even as their combined revenue ballooned 146 per cent. That retreat has weighed on several agency networks, which built enterprise practices around precisely these clients. Nike is among the consumer brands moving the other way, lifting its ad-to-sales ratio in recent years — a reminder that the intensity story is category-specific, not universal.
What the $1.34 trillion headline hides
None of this means the market is shrinking. WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9 per cent this year to $1.34 trillion, fuelled by channels like retail media and platform advertising that barely existed a decade ago; adjusted for inflation, that is a 61.3 per cent increase over 25 years. But the growth is increasingly funded by smaller advertisers and new channels, not by the big brand owners of the past. For sellers, the practical takeaway is to price and package for the buyers who are actually growing — and for agencies, to stop assuming the enterprise pipeline will behave the way it did in 2019.
