• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 11, 2019

The U.S. ad market turned in its strongest September ever, with demand from advertisers expanding 8.2% over September 2018, according to the most recent tracking of the U.S. Ad Tracker, a collaboration of MediaPost and Standard Media Index.

The tracker -- an index of total media spending actually processed by the major agency holding companies -- is baselined to a value of 100 in 2011. September 2019 reached 264 -- the highest ever for the month -- and trailing only November. November is historically the strongest month of the year in terms of ad demand due to incremental activity around the holidays.

Sequentially, September’s index is up 26.9% from August’s.