Unlike Spotify, GroupM’s end-of-year advertising review doesn’t tell you which ads you’ve seen or heard the most this year. Not that you’d want that, anyway.

But it does give marketers a broad view of ad-revenue figures and trends from the past year + what’s expected for the year ahead. Some takeaways from its 2021 report, released today:

• Global advertising revenue (not counting US political ads) is expected to grow 22.5% in 2021, totalling approximately $763 billion. Next year, GroupM, owner of media agencies including Mindshare and MediaCom, estimates it’ll grow 9.7%.
• Across the 64 markets GroupM tracks, the median one’s ad revenue is forecast to grow 19.4% this year and 9.1% the next. “In most instances, growth appears especially strong when viewed in comparison to declines in 2020, although two-year growth rates between 2019 and 2021 are also commonly well above historical averages,” the report reads.
• Per GroupM’s estimates, digital ads will make up 64.4% of all advertising in 2021—a pretty big jump from 2019’s 52.1%. Outside of China, the triopoly—Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta—made up more than 50% of total ad revenue this year.

“It’s possible that this is the fastest growth in the history of advertising, at least in known history,” Brian Wieser, GroupM’s global president of business intelligence, said during a briefing. “We do expect some kind of reversion back toward a normal mid-single-digit growth rate over time, but at very elevated levels. In other words, we’re creating a new plateau for future growth to occur.”

An change a day doesn’t keep advertisers away

Apple’s iOS 14.5 changes earlier this year have caused plenty of headaches for marketers. But Wieser said the changes haven’t had a material impact on digital advertising revenue as a whole.

“The changes in data do not cause a change in budgets allocated to digital media. We saw this with GDPR—no observable impact at an industry level,” he explained during the briefing. “Even though the data fidelity is lower now than it might have been before, it doesn’t change the budgets, it doesn’t impact the growth rate. But you never know, things could change.”

Talking television

The global TV industry (not including US political ads) will grow 11.7% this year—following last year’s 13.7% dip, per GroupM’s forecasts. The report predicts TV won’t return to “2019 levels until 2023,” and after that, growth will be “generally flat” in most markets. This year, TV will make up 21% of total advertising revenue.

Of course, the bright spot for television is connected TV, which GroupM says is poised to grow “substantially,” raking in roughly $17 billion in 2022 and $33 billion by 2026. But Wieser pointed out that three of the most popular streamers—Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix—are ad-free.

“In our view, the ad-free services will basically dominate, increasingly, every market on Earth, maybe outside of China,” he said. “Advertising on television will become a lot harder to come by—the reach potential of television will diminish over time.”—MS

New data from She Runs It, an industry nonprofit focused on advancing women’s careers, shows that the number of women working in marketing, media, and tech is down nearly 10% from 2020, bringing representation below 50% for the first time since 2018.

This finding comes from the organization’s annual #Inclusive100 report, which found that women made up around 46% of employees within those industries in 2021. Of the companies surveyed not in marketing, media, or tech, men and women left at closer rates.

“It seems like our industry was really impacted pretty dramatically by the course of the past year,” Lynn Branigan, president and CEO of She Runs It, told Ad Age.

So what gives?

While the report does not give specifics around the causes, there are a few trends that likely played a role:

• Women, as a whole, have been more likely than men to leave their jobs for caregiving or parenting reasons over the course of the pandemic.
• A McKinsey study, Women in the Workplace, recently found that “burnout is escalating much faster among women than among men,” with one in three considering downshifting their career or quitting this year.
• Women in the marketing and advertising space have also been open about workplace misogyny in 2021. Sarah Benson, a former brand strategist at adam&eveDDB, told Marketing Brew in July that it’s contributed to women leaving the industry.

One piece of good news from the study: The number of female board members went up from 46% to 52% in marketing, media, and tech, an increase that mostly came from women of color.—KH

Art Basel /ärt baah-sel/, noun: A for-profit art festival that showcases more creations than just a single banana taped to a wall.

• The fair started in Basel, Switzerland, but now has shows in Miami and Hong Kong. Art Basel Miami started last week and wrapped up over the weekend.
• Journalist Georgina Adam once described the fair as “renowned for its sometimes highly decadent parties…with the combination of the tropical climate, Latin American lustiness, availability of drugs, and luxury hotels that seem to invite excess.”

So why’s a marketing newsletter talking about an art show? Because a few select brand marketers decided to get in on the artsy action this year.

Cheetos: The sticky snack teamed up with LL Cool J’s lifestyle brand Rock The Bells for an art installation at the fair. “As part of Miami’s Art Basel event, onboard a 220-foot, four-story megayacht, artist Lefty Out There will unveil the original work—all made entirely out of Cheetle,” which is the orange Cheeto dust left on fingers post-munchin’, per The Takeout.

: Vroom-vroom maker BMW continued its longtime partnership with Art Basel this year. Days before Art Basel’s kickoff, the company premiered its hybrid-electric concept vehicle, the BMW Concept XM, at a “special event” in Miami Beach featuring a Nas concert and sculpture by artist Kennedy Yanko.

Crypto: In Of course they’re at Art Basel news, crypto payments service MoonPay conducted an interactive scavenger hunt at the event in Miami Beach in partnership with the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection.—PB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Social: If you’re new to using Twitter as a marketing platform (because we all were at one point), here’s a beginner’s guide to its analytics.

Content marketing: Click here to learn the seven habits of effective content writers.

Work life: How these software founders started prioritizing employees over growth.

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This perfume ad from 1963 has us wondering where we can buy that luxurious floofy glove.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Macy’s has a new holiday mascot, Tiptoe
• Twitter bans posting images of people without their consent
• Spotify Wrapped was bigger than ever, but not everyone’s a fan