Madison Avenue's consensus outlook for the U.S. ad economy improved dramatically this morning, as IPG Mediabrands' Magna unit increased its forecast for 2021 ad growth to 23.2%, up from 15.1% in June, 6.4% in March and just 4.1% when it made its original prediction for the year in December 2020. Magna also upgraded its outlook for 2022, and now expects it to rise 11.6%, up from the 8.0% it was projecting in its June update.
Based on Magna's upgrades, the consensus outlook for the ad industry's Big 4 forecasting units -- also including Dentsu, WPP's GroupM and Publicis Media's Zenith -- now stands at growth rates of +16.6% for 2021 and +10.7% for 2022.
Importantly, much of the revised growth isn't just due to easy comparisons with 2020's ad recession and continuing uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, but is part of a genuine ad spending expansion, says Magna Executive Vice President-Global Market Intelligence Vincent Letang.