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