The numbers tell one story. The forces behind them tell a far more interesting one. In this mid-year edition of This Year Next Year, Kate Scott-Dawkins unpacks a forecast that has been significantly upgraded since December — not in spite of geopolitical turbulence, but in some ways because of it. From the AI investment cycle reshaping advertiser behaviour across every category, to a new advertising channel that could scale faster than anything the industry has ever seen, to the uncomfortable questions about what ad-funded platforms owe the people they serve — this is the episode that sets the agenda for the next 18 months.
Key Topics Discussed
Why global ad growth has been upgraded to 9% — and what it says about the structural resilience of the industry in a world of conflict, inflation, and fractured consumer confidence
The Gold Rush analogy at the heart of the forecast — and why California is, once again, at the centre of it all
Generative Search: the brand new channel that could hit $100B by 2030, making it the fastest-scaling advertising format ever measured
Why social media is now the single largest ad channel globally — and what threatens that dominance from 2027 onward
Retail media's quiet takeover: how commerce advertising overtook all of television in 2025, and what agentic commerce does to that equation next
The streaming crossover: why 2026 is the year US streaming finally surpasses linear in national TV ad revenue
Out-of-Home's unlikely staying power — and what it reveals about the limits of algorithmic media
Courts, platforms, and product liability: how two landmark 2026 rulings could fundamentally reshape the economics of social media
The effervescence paradox — why people are retreating into AI-mediated solitude and simultaneously paying record prices to be in a crowd
New surfaces, no rulebook: the creative opportunity waiting in AR, autonomous vehicles, and ambient computing
What the forty-niners got badly wrong — and what that means for the choices the advertising industry faces right now
00:00 - Introduction and the Gold Rush analogy
02:00 - The upgraded forecast: headline numbers in context 06:00 - Three themes that frame everything else
10:00 - Where the money is moving: a channel by channel breakdown 1
8:00 - The bigger picture: political, economic, social, and technological forces
32:00 - Regional highlights
35:00 - Closing: Manifest Destiny and the future worth building
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