• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 13, 2022

A week after Publicis' Zenith unit reduced its forecast for worldwide ad spending growth this year, GroupM followed suit. While both agencies characterized their downgrades as minor, their back-to-back adjustments -- -1.1 and 1.3 percentage points, respectively -- signal volatility in the global economy has taken some steam off an expansionary advertising marketplace.

Interestingly, GroupM actually boosted its U.S. forecast for 2022 up 0.3 points to a growth rate of 12.8% in 2022.

The revisions -- which represent adjustments from forecasts originally released in December 2021 -- only marginally impact the consensus outlook of the Big 4 agency forecasting units, which currently stand at growth rates of 9.7% for worldwide ad spending and 12.4% for U.S. ad spending this year.