The US advertising market is quite heavily affected by political spending and the Olympics (P&O), with TV particularly influenced by cyclical P&O spending, according to [download page] the latest forecast from MAGNA GLOBAL. The researcher estimates that ad spending on core media will inch forward by 0.4% this year, but that growth is a more robust 2.4% when excluding P&O revenues. That disparity also means that TV revenues will decline by 2.8% this year, but otherwise be up by 1.9% when excluding the P&O impact. Next year, when P&O spending is back in play, the advertising market will rebound, growing by 5.9%, and fueled by an 8.9% expansion in TV revenues.
P&O dollars will also drive a turnaround in radio revenues, which are forecast to decrease slightly this year (by 0.2%) before growing by 1% next year. Outdoor advertising will also get a boost, projected to grow by 5.4% next year following a 3.5% increase this year.
Print media will be largely immune to the cyclical nature of P&O spend, though. Magazines, forecast for a 6.7% decline in revenues this year, aren’t expected to do much better next year (-5.4%), while the forecast for newspapers is even worse next year than this year (-7.7% vs. -6.8%).
The P&O impact appears to be largely absent from online ad expenditures, too. This year, online ad spend growth should crack double-digits, at 11.5%, with a similar outlook held for next year (12%). Last year, online ad spending grew by 15%, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Magna Global’s more muted forecast for this year owes to deflationary pricing trends affecting display revenues, per the researchers.
