by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese
Source: www.mediapost.com, September 2021
The expansion of the U.S. ad economy slowed to 17.% in August, the weakest growth in half a year, due to tougher comparisons with August 2020 — which was the first month last year to show growth after the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an ad-spending recession.
Relative to August 2019, the U.S. ad marketplace is up 16.7% this August, according to a MediaPost analysis of the U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration of Standard Media Index and MediaPost based on actual ad-spending data.
While the ad market recovery has been erratic, and some are anticipating future slowdowns due to spikes of infections from the COVID-19 Delta variant, some leading indicators like robust upfront network advertising sales, suggest it might be sustainable.
That said, the national TV advertising marketplace fell 2.2% in August, which typically is a weak month for network TV advertising sales heading into a new season.
By comparison, the digital advertising marketplace remains very strong, expanding 35.6% in August vs. the same month in 2020.
Smaller advertisers continue to lead the U.S. advertising expansion — with categories ranked 11th or smaller boosting aggregate ad spending by 27.7% in August, while the top 10 ad categories grew only 12.5%.
Powered by Standard Media Index’s Cross Platform product, the Ad Market Tracker indexes the movement of U.S. advertising investment on a month-to-month basis. Data represented in the index is derived from actual spending by ad agencies representing more than 90% of all U.S. national advertiser investment. Baselined to a value of 100, the index is intended to be a simple way for readers to visualize the supply and demand of ad spending overall, and across the major media.
