The total US advertising revenue, excluding political ads, is expected to touch $361 billion in 2023, a growth of 5.9 percent. Brian Wieser, principal at Wall Street insights provider Madison and Wall, says there’s a significant degree of positive momentum in the United States advertising industry.
He highlighted that the fourth quarter of 2022 was barely up, rising only 0.2 percent as the post-pandemic spending boom faded. Wieser expects an acceleration in underlying advertising growth in the coming quarter.
“During the third quarter of 2023, I estimate US advertising, including directories and direct mail but excluding political advertising, grew by 8.1 percent, a meaningful acceleration over the second quarter’s 4.6 percent rate and the first quarter’s 1.6 percent. This acceleration in the most recent quarter was expected, if not to the same degree of strength as we ended up seeing.”
Digital platforms in the US grew by 14.6 percent – a 13.8 percent gain for social media platforms and a 22.8 percent jump for commerce media platforms. However, the same cannot be said about television. The television sector saw a third-quarter ad decline of 2.8 percent year-over-year. Weiser said if sellers of TV advertising who do not operate traditional broadcast networks, traditional sellers of TV advertising saw declines of 5.6 percent. “Within national TV, digital, connected TV, including TV networks’ streaming services, grew by 11.6 percent to account for 34 percent of total revenue.”
The expert said that the overall medium faces long-term growth challenges. This is because of large advertisers who dominate TV. “They need to shift spending away from TV to fund additional digital spending, and this shift is not offset by growth in spending from newer advertisers.”
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