• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 4, 2025

While it's not exactly the kind of crash Wall Street's financial markets have been experiencing recently, the U.S. advertising market expanded at one of its lowest rates in February since the last ad recession -- rising just 2.8% from February 2024.

February's relatively slow growth follows two consecutive months of double-digit growth in January and December 2024, and is the smallest expansion since it tied with May 2024, which was among the lowest rates of growth since the nine-months-long advertising recession ended in April 2023.

While it's unclear yet whether February is a leading or lagging indicator of how the advertising marketplace ultimately will react to the acceleration of economic uncertainty and geopolitical turmoil sparked by the new Trump Administration's on-again, off-again tariffs-based trade war, the financial markets already are exhibiting the worst declines since the COVID-19 pandemic, which coincidentally sparked the last U.S. advertising recession.

February's weak ad market results also follow significant downward revisions in the 2025 ad forecasts published recently by two top industry sources: IPG Mediabrands' Vincent Letang and Madison and Wall's Brian Wieser.

The Big 3 holding company (Dentsu, IPG, GroupM) forecasting consensus for 2025's U.S. ad growth currently stands at +4.1%, but it will be months before they release their mid-year updates in June.

MediaPost is scheduled to hold its annual Outfront Forum Monday morning in New York City, at which top agency investment officers will handicap their own outlooks for this year's upfront marketplace, as well as their views on the not-too-distant future.

Close followers of the Ad Market Tracker may notice a bit more latency in this month's data refresh, and that is because Guideline will be updating the real-time index a few days later each month going forward to ensure greater accuracy.

“As the world's most comprehensive and accurate media investment application, Guideline is at a pivotal point within its next phase of growth," explains Guideline Senior Vice President-GTM Strategy Alberto Leyes, adding, "We are scaling critical facets of our business – capital markets, international, AI product evolution – balancing the nuances of each function to maximize value across industries. As such, the processes in which we reconcile our data has evolved, slightly shifting the timing in which we publicly provide the industry with insight into broader market trends.”