U.S. Advertising Sees Slight Uptick In Growth

U.S. Advertising Sees Slight Uptick In Growth

by Wayne Friedman, March 3, 2017

One forecast shows slightly stronger growth for U.S. advertising for 2017.

U.S. Advertising Sees Slight Uptick In Growth

Pivotal Research Group now says U.S. advertising will grow at a 2.5% rate — up from its earlier 2.0% estimate — in part because of stronger end-of-the-year 2016 results.

All of 2016 — including political and Olympic activity — witnessed an overall improvement of 6.7% to $203.7 billion, writes Brian Wieser, senior research analyst at Pivotal. Looking at core U.S. advertising, but taking out political/Olympics revenue, there was a 3.6% increase in fourth-quarter 2016 and a 5.0% improvement in 2016 overall.

Wieser believes that digital advertising growth decelerated in the fourth quarter, but was still up significantly. Google’s domestic advertising rose 20%, while Facebook grew 46%.

Total TV gained 6.5% in 2016, including political and Olympic revenue, to $69 billion.

National TV advertising was up 1.8% in the fourth quarter and 4.5% for all of 2016, when including Olympics/political. Without Olympics/political advertising, TV gained 2.6%. Local TV soared 10.8% — largely because of political advertising. But without political, local TV slipped 0.8%.

Wieser says other media — non-digital, non-TV — “fared much worse during the quarter and year.”

Radio and outdoor was flat; print was down by a double-digit percentage. Direct mail fell off by 5% in the year’s final quarter.

 

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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