• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, December 9, 2024

Two more of the big agency holding company forecasting units -- WPP's GroupM and IPG's Magna -- this morning issued year-end forecasts significantly upgrading the outlooks for the U.S. and global advertising economies.

For the first time in decades, Publicis's Zenith Media unit has not publicly released a year-end forecast, and going forward, will be removed from MediaPost's periodic consensus updates.

Combined with last week's release by Dentsu, the Big 3 agency holding company consensus projects total worldwide ad spending will expand 9.3% this year, and 6.1% in 2025, despite prospects of geopolitical instability.

The Big 3 consensus for U.S. ad spending now estimates the U.S. ad economy will expand 10.3% this year, but will increase only 4.3% in 2025, due to comparisons with incremental political ad spending during 2024.

The timing of Publicis' withdrawal from publicly reporting its ad spending forecasts is interesting, given this morning's announcement of Omnicom's acquisition of Interpublic, including its Magna unit, which evolved from the ad industry's first public reporting of ad spending tallies and forecasts, which were pioneered by late McCann-Erickson executive Bob Coen. Historically, Omnicom has been loath to publish or release advertising and media marketplace data and/or forecasts.

Zenith was the first big media agency to try and rival Interpublic as the industry standard for ad spending estimates and forecasts, launching its own public reports in 1988, but in the past several years under Publicis, the company has pulled back on that, and according to an agency spokesperson, will not release any estimates to the press.

For the first time in recent memory, Zenith also will not participate in UBS' annual media Global Media and Communications Conference this morning, which historically opens the big agency holding company forecasters' presentations.

While Zenith U.S. CEO Laura Hanrahan participated last year, only Magna's Vincent Letang and GroupM's Kate Scott-Dawkins are participating this year.