GroupM: Google, Facebook, and Amazon “triopoly” grew its share of US digital ad market from 80% in 2019 to 90% in 2020, and now collects 50%+ of all US ad spend
The three tech giants now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic economy got them there. Tweets: @esgarchitect , @jamessurowiecki , @deardara , @stevesi , @tcpeter , @moorehn , @wsj , and @jason_kint See also Mediagazer Tweets: Graham Sinclair / @esgarchitect : Welcome to the triopoly. Assume everything you see is by algorithm, there is no normal* or community-wide shared experience. Everything is tilted. To be independent, original and heard is the new rarest experience. #ESG #marketing #DigitalTransformation #Google #Facebook #Amazon https://twitter.com/... James Surowiecki / @jamessurowiecki : It seems weird to lump Amazon in with Google and Facebook, since the “ad dollars” they get are dollars spent to promote items on their site - they're more like the equivalent of slotting fees than advertising dollars. https://twitter.com/... Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl / @deardara : The entire advertising economy of the year 2000? All the TV networks, all the newspapers, all the magazines, all the billboards, all the junk mail? It all belongs to Facebook, Google, and Amazon now. https://twitter.com/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : Google, Facebook and Amazon now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic supercharged advertising's ‘triopoly.’ https://www.wsj.com/... // So a lot like broadcast TV used to look, but a lot more effective and open to small and medium business? Tim Peter / @tcpeter : I do this for a living. I'm aware of these numbers generally. But it's truly something to see them clearly laid out like this. https://twitter.com/... Heidi N. Moore / @moorehn : Great story about how the pandemic has only empowered Facebook, Google and Amazon to dominate online advertising. By the terrific @keachhagey and @VranicaWSJ https://www.wsj.com/... @wsj : Google, Facebook and Amazon now collect more than half of all ad dollars spent in the U.S. The pandemic supercharged advertising's “triopoly.” https://www.wsj.com/... Jason Kint / @jason_kint : 🙋🏾♂ ️, you're paying for demand fulfillment. That's not a long-term strategy with Amazon. It's extinction. “For every dollar Steelcase spent on Amazon ads during the holiday season, it made $30 in sales, the company says.” https://www.wsj.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
GroupM's 2020 tally put Google, Facebook and Amazon at 80% of US digital ad spending just a year earlier; hitting 90% in a pandemic year — and more than half of ALL US ad dollars — marked the moment digital consolidation stopped being a digital-only story. The firm's later global read confirmed the pattern wasn't American: by its July 2021 count, the same five platforms claimed 46% of worldwide ad revenue, versus 17% for the top five back in 2010.
The arc since then is one of partial rebalancing inside that concentration. Apple's ATT changes forced Meta to raise ad prices, pushing budgets toward Google, Amazon and TikTok, while analysts reframed the market as having moved past a Google-Meta duopoly with Amazon — and potentially Apple — as major forces.
First-order effects
- Advertisers face a market where three buyers' auction prices effectively set the cost of reaching US consumers, with GroupM's numbers showing the trio absorbing over half of all US ad spend including TV, radio and print budgets.
- Publishers and smaller ad platforms compete for the shrinking remainder: if the triopoly holds 90% of digital spend, every other player splits what's left of a pool that itself keeps migrating online.
Second-order effects
- Budget flight follows pricing pressure — when Meta's post-ATT price hikes hit, advertisers shifted spend to Google, Amazon and TikTok rather than leaving the big platforms, reinforcing the very concentration that gave the leaders pricing power.
- Amazon's ad business becomes the swing force: as its revenue passed YouTube's and pay-TV subscriptions fell, targetable commerce-adjacent inventory pulled brand dollars that previously funded traditional media.
Third-order effects
- Concentration at this level invites structural counterweights: later eMarketer projections had Google's share of US search ads falling below 50% in 2025 for the first time in over a decade, suggesting even dominant incumbents lose share to Amazon, Apple and others without losing the consolidated market overall.
- If ad markets consolidate around a handful of walled gardens with first-party purchase data, regulatory scrutiny of ad-tech intermediaries and publisher economics become persistent policy fixtures rather than episodic fights.
The trend: US advertising is consolidating around a few platform-scale sellers whose share of total spend keeps rising even as the composition of the top tier shifts from duopoly toward Amazon- and Apple-weighted competition.