Magna Boosts Ad Outlook: Cites Economic Rebound, Cyclical Events

On the heels of GroupM's recent significant upgrade, IPG Mediabrands' Magna unit also boosted both the U.S. and worldwide ad outlooks for 2024, citing a combination of factors, including:

  • Significantly better than expected ad spending during the first quarter of the year.
  • Better than expected macroeconomic factors, including both GDP growth and lower rates of inflation.
  • The impact of a record number of cyclical (both political and global sporting events) adding billions in incremental ad spending.

"The global ad market is accelerating," says Magna Executive Vice President-Global Market Research Vincent Létang, revising IPG Mediabrands global forecast for 2024 up nearly three percentage points -- from 7.2% in December 2023 to 10.0% currently.


In addition to the macroeconomic factors and cyclical events, Létang cited three underlying factors driving ad spending growth, including:
  • "Media innovation" -- principally the ad-supported streaming across all the major platforms.
  • "Commerce innovation" -- including the rise of retail media networks.
  • "The largest ever cyclical boost" -- including four major national elections, and three major global sporting events.

Regarding retail media, Magna joined GroupM, WARC and others who continue to revise the category's spending upward.

"Retail media ad revenues will increase to $146 billion this year, representing 16% of total ad revenues," notes Magna Executive Vice President-Market Insights & Strategic Innovation Luke Stillman.

The Magna team cited a variety of factors for retail media's boom, including ecommerce adoption by consumers, the loss of identity targeting data in conventional media and the increasing role of commerce data from retail sites and media networks, and increasing demand from marketers to connect their campaign spending to outcomes measurement.

Magna also upgraded its U.S. ad growth outlook for 2024 up 1.5 percentage points -- from +9.2% in December 2023 to +10.7% currently, citing similar factors as the ones driving the global ad expansion.

While much of the increases are benefiting the biggest digital media suppliers, which are increasing their share of total ad revenues (to 60% currently for Amazon, Google and Meta), the massive 2024 political ad market in the U.S. is boosting revenue for local TV stations, which will see a 24.9% expansion in ad revenue this year. Excluding the impact of political ad spending, Magna estimates local TV station ad revenue would decline 4% this year.

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