WPP CEO Martin Sorell says the ad firm will spend $70M on Snapchat this year, versus $5.5B on Google, up from $4B a year ago, and $1.75B on Facebook
Facebook may have issues with measurement, but they don't appear to be hampering the social media giant's advertising growth.
Context & Ripple Effects
Martin Sorrell's budget breakdown puts the scale of the platform hierarchy in one snapshot: WPP's $5.5B going to Google — up from $4B a year earlier — is roughly 79 times its $70M Snapchat commitment, with Facebook's $1.75B in between. The description notes Facebook's measurement problems aren't denting that spend, which tracks with the broader picture of a Facebook-Google duopoly that has already shrugged off Snap's rise as a challenger.
The arc runs forward from here: WPP scaled Snapchat up to $96M in 2016 and then announced plans for $200M in Snapchat ads for 2017, while forecasts had Snap's ad revenue growing far faster than either incumbent's. A year later, WPP and rival holding companies were still hunting for a real counterweight, boosting Amazon spending 40% to 100% explicitly as an alternative to the duopoly.
First-order effects
- WPP's incremental dollars are flowing overwhelmingly to Google — a $1.5B year-over-year increase against a $70M Snapchat line — meaning Sorrell's clients' budgets are deepening, not diversifying, their concentration on search.
- Facebook's $1.75B allocation proceeds despite acknowledged measurement issues, so the immediate effect is that advertiser frustration with metrics is being absorbed rather than acted on.
Second-order effects
- Snap's growth case depends on converting exactly these token allocations into real ones — the jump from $70M toward the $200M WPP later planned is the test of whether challenger platforms can graduate from experimental to core budget lines.
- With two platforms absorbing the bulk of WPP's digital spend, agencies and their clients keep funding alternative channels like Amazon to rebuild negotiating leverage against the duopoly.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, online advertising consolidates structurally around Google and Facebook regardless of advertiser discontent, because measurement gripes and duopoly worries have so far changed allocation at the margins ($70M-scale) rather than the center ($5.5B-scale).
- Agency holding companies risk becoming pass-through buyers with thinning leverage, pushing them toward owned alternatives — the Amazon push among Publicis, Omnicom, and WPP is the visible attempt to change that position.
The trend: Digital ad budgets are concentrating further into the Google-Facebook duopoly even as WPP and its rivals fund challenger platforms like Snap and Amazon in search of an offset.