U.S. Ad Economy Rises 5.9% In August, First Expansion Since March

The U.S. advertising marketplace grew 5.9% in August -- its first monthly year-over-year expansion since March, when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on many forms of ad spending.

The finding, based on a MediaPost analysis of Standard Media Index's U.S. Ad Market Tracker, represents actual media-buying processed by the major ad agencies and brands, and may not be as representative of the long-tail marketplace of smaller advertisers and agencies.

In fact, within the Ad Market Tracker database, the biggest advertisers represented by the top 10 advertising categories increased their ad spending in August 8.4% over August 2019. During the same period, advertisers in categories 11-plus declined 3.1%, indicating that the U.S. ad market rebound is being led by the biggest advertisers.

That said, smaller brands tend to be even more reliant on digital media than expensive national media like broadcast and cable network TV, and the Ad Market Tracker shows that digital is leading the turnaround as well.

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In August, digital ad spending soared 17.9% over August 2019.

During the same period, national TV advertising declined 10.8%.

The data affirm projections of many analysts that the U.S. ad recession would bottom out during the summer and would begin to rebound heading into the fourth quarter.

Sequentially, August's index increased 34.8% over July's.

2 comments about "U.S. Ad Economy Rises 5.9% In August, First Expansion Since March".
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  1. Bart Foreman from EndGame Marketing Solutions, September 21, 2020 at 10:40 a.m.

    Not unexpected as BTS gave it a boost along with political ads. I wonder what the increase would have been without the political ads. September and October should be strong with the addition of football and man more political ads.

  2. Tom Tyler from GCTVTexas, September 23, 2020 at 4:53 p.m.

    This is really good news! 

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