Online advertising is the driving force in the global advertising market, and “the online growth story is weighted towards social media​.” That was one of the many takeaways from a presentation by Maria Rua Aguete, head of media & entertainment at research and data firm Omdia, in a session entitled “Smarter Screen, Smarter Ads:​ The New Era of Advertising” at StreamTV Europe in Lisbon on Tuesday.

Total ad revenue will surpass $1.6 trillion by 2030​, unless the Iran war impacts the forecast, according to the firm’s projections. Online advertising will account for nearly $1.5 trillion of that, up from $935 billion in 2025, the expert shared. It will grow 13 percent in 2026 alone, compared to a 2 percent increase in traditional advertising.

The key growth engine is social, for which Omdia predicts a 19 percent gain this year, compared to a 9 percent increase in non-social online ads.

“Social over-indexes in terms of ad spend per hour,” the expert also highlighted on Tuesday. “And most of this spend is going to a very small number of players.” Indeed, the social ad revenue leadership board is topped by Facebook, followed by Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, a chart presented by Aguete showed. Other players include LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and X.

But Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok “capture over 90 percent of social media advertising revenues,” the Omdia analyst explained. And Meta alone, thanks to Facebook and Instagram, takes 70 percent of the total social ad pie, she shared, causing raised eyebrows in the room.

Social video advertising will be responsible for 40 percent of global TV and video revenue by 2030, according to Omdia’s projections. At the same time, “traditional broadcasters are losing TV/video revenue market share​,” Rua Aguete emphasized.

In another one of her predictions that caused surprise, she forecast that connected TV (CTV) ad revenue would overtake linear TV ad revenue in the 2030s​. “The competitive dynamics of TV advertising have changed completely​,” she offered in this context, mentioning that Amazon, Netflix and Google account for around 20 percent of this ad pie. “CTV advertising is increasingly owned by just three companies​,” which Omdia predicts will account for 40 percent of this form of ad revenue by 2030.

In comparison, traditional broadcasters will only get a 25 percent share in 2030, down from 30 percent in 2025 and 43 percent in 2020, and CTV manufacturers and operating system operators, such as Samsung and Roku, will get a market share of just 10 percent.