Top 50 Ad Sales Companies: Capex and Quarterly Benchmark Updates
Madison & Wall: Saturday Summary for Oct. 12, 2024
Each week on the M&W Podcast, Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser discuss Madison & Wall’s latest research and walk listeners through how the advertising business really works. Episode 6 of the Madison & Wall M&W Podcast is now available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Weekly Work
Capital expenditures data helps us understand which companies are better prepared for the future compared to others. When considering that the world’s largest advertising sellers — including Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft — are making massive long-term investments in artificial intelligence, we also wondered how other top 50 sellers’ long-term investments compared. View the list of companies and their capital expenditure ratios here.
Quarterly ad revenue benchmarks for the top 50 sellers… This week, we published more details on the top 50 U.S. advertising sellers, with visualizations of the data on a quarterly basis. We reviewed it by sector: digital platforms, digital commerce, television, outdoor advertising, audio, and publishing. Review the benchmarks for all sectors here.
Additional Context
Looking at our most extensive piece of work this week…
Capital expenditures (property and equipment purchases) usually include long-lived assets, which can include software or new technology. This line item may not capture everything that has a long-term benefit and certainly does not isolate how much companies spend specifically on AI. Despite that, it helps us understand which companies are investing the most in long-term growth initiatives.
We benchmarked 43 of the top 50 advertising sellers that reveal capital expenditure data. It was no surprise that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta — the four biggest sellers of advertising globally outside of China — accounted for 71% of the total. As we mention in this week’s podcast, these large companies have more flexibility to strengthen their market positions and, theoretically, ensure their continued relevance.
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