• by Wayne Friedman , March 3, 2017

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.