• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 27, 2024

The U.S. ad market had its second-best monthly expansion this year in August, placing a close second to July. Both months received an able assist in ad spending due to NBCU's coverage of the Paris Olympic Games.

Ad spending rose 12.1% in August vs. August 2023 (which itself was up 2.8%), according to Guideline's just-refreshed U.S. ad-market tracker.

While that is a deceleration from July's 13.8% expansion, both those summer months historically have low seasonal ad demand.

While Guideline has not yet released the explicit impact of Olympic-related ad spending on August, an analysis it released last month for July showed the Olympics accounted for six percentage points of its nearly 14% growth.

Whatever the Olympics' explicit impact was on the month, August was the 16th consecutive monthly expansion of the U.S. ad marketplace.