Social Media Ads to Reach $640 Billion and Nearly Half of All Online Ad Revenue by 2030, Omdia Forecasts

Social media advertising will account for nearly half of global online ad revenue by 2030, when the overall digital advertising market reaches $640 billion, according to a forecast from research firm Omdia reported by 01net.

The projection marks a significant milestone for a channel that has spent two decades climbing the digital advertising hierarchy. If Omdia's numbers hold, social platforms will move from being one of several major digital ad verticals to a position of near parity with the entire rest of the online advertising ecosystem — search, display, retail media, video and everything else combined.

The forecast arrives amid a period of aggressive monetization across the major platforms. Meta has expanded its ad inventory into Reels and messaging surfaces, TikTok continues to scale its commerce-linked ad products, and YouTube has pushed deeper into short-form monetization. Omdia's figure of $640 billion for the total online advertising market by 2030 frames the scale: social media's share of that pie approaching 50 percent represents one of the largest single-channel concentrations in the industry's history.

What the forecast means for practitioners

For brands and agencies, a market where social commands nearly half of digital spend implies intensifying competition for feed and short-form inventory. Historically, rising concentration of spend on social platforms has coincided with rising CPMs in the most contested formats — vertical video and creator-adjacent placements chief among them. Media buyers planning multi-year budgets should treat the forecast as a signal to pressure-test channel mix assumptions rather than a reason to shift budgets wholesale.

For creators and publishers dependent on social distribution, the projection cuts both ways. A larger social ad market suggests more monetization surface area — more branded content budgets, more platform revenue-share programs, more ad products designed around creator inventory. But it also implies platforms will keep tightening their grip on ad economics, prioritizing formats they control and can price directly over partner-sold inventory.

Official forecast versus industry speculation

Omdia's numbers are the official projection in this story. What remains open is how the composition of that spend breaks down: the headline figures do not specify which platforms, formats or regions drive the growth toward 2030, and any claims about individual players — whether Meta extends its lead, or TikTok or YouTube capture disproportionate share — would be speculation beyond what the forecast confirms.

The six-year horizon also leaves room for structural shifts the model may not fully capture. Regulatory pressure on ad targeting in Europe and the United States, the growth of retail media as a competing budget destination, and AI-driven changes to ad buying and creative production could each reshape the trajectory before 2030.

For now, the concrete takeaway is the headline pair of numbers: a $640 billion online advertising market by 2030, with social media advertising approaching half of it. How closely reality tracks that curve will depend on whether platforms can keep converting attention into ad inventory at the pace the forecast assumes.