Commentary

How Madison Avenue Attained Herd Immunity

Just a week after Publicis Media revised its 2021 ad outlook upward, and less than a month after it published its last upward revision, GroupM is sending signals that "those forecasts may turn out to have been conservative."

That's how GroupM Business Intelligence Global President Brian Wieser characterized his most recent sentiment in the latest edition of his Global Media Monitor published over the weekend.

Only halfway through 2021, the major agency holding company forecasting units already have revised their U.S. and worldwide advertising outlooks a number of times, leading MediaPost to publish revisions of our running tabulation of Madison Avenue's consensus forecast upward seven times for the U.S. and four times for the global ad economy, both of which have expanded markedly.

Since the earliest revisions of the year in January through the ones published in late July, the consensus outlook has grown at a multiple of nearly 4x for the U.S., and nearly 2x for the global ad economy.

While it may be too early to say what the next revisions will show -- or how 2021 will ultimately turn out -- I can tell you with confidence that this is the most moving target I've ever covered in 40+ years of tracking the ad industry's ad trackers. And they ain't done yet.

In his latest dispatch, Wieser seems to be preparing us for even more movement citing stronger-than-expected macroeconomic indicators, including new estimates for U.S. and European expansion, which follow recent ones for China "despite the ongoing effects of the pandemic in so much of the world."

In other words, it looks like the ad economy already has attained herd immunity, even if the global population has not -- and as Wieser suggests, "growth in advertising during 2021 appears to be outpacing what were already heightened expectations."


What You'll Read About In This Week's GroupM Global Marketing Monitor:

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