• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, Yesterday

Less than five months into the year, ad-spending tracker Guideline is already calling the rest of 2025, projecting it will rise 4% over 2024.

While Guideline is best known for its ad spending (Standard Media Index) and ad pricing (SQAD) data, the company's analysts are making the forecast based on a quarter of actual spending data, the second quarter's "forward booking" (advance ad buys) data, previous year trends, as well as assumptions on macroeconomic factors to project 4.0% annual growth in U.S. ad spending this year.

Guideline's forecast is in line with the current consensus of the Big 3 agency (Dentsu, WPP's GroupM and IPG Mediabrands' Magna) ad forecasting teams' 4.1% growth estimate for U.S. ad spending this year.

Describing it as a "material slowdown" from 2024's U.S. ad-spending growth, Guideline's analysts attributed the downgrade to key macro factors, including:

• Slowing consumer sentiment.

• Persistently high interest rates and elevated inflation.

• Trade policy disruptions and tariff-related cost pressure.

• The absence of one-off events like the Olympics and political campaigns, which buoyed 2024 spend.

In fact, digital was the only media type to experience gains in actual first-quarter growth, and currently is showing double-digit gains in forward bookings for the second quarter.

All of 2025's 4% growth forecast was attributed to a 12% forecasted gain in digital ad-spending growth this year, with all other media experiencing declines (see below).