Ad Market Remains Tepid, Expands 4.4% In May

The U.S. ad market improved slightly in May, which expanded 4.4% over the same month a year earlier, according to just refreshed monthly data from Guideline's U.S. Ad Market Tracker.

While an improvement over April's 3.4% expansion, U.S. ad growth remains tepid and in line with recent forecast downgrades by big agency holding companies including IPG Mediabrands' Magna and WPP Media.

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4 comments about "Ad Market Remains Tepid, Expands 4.4% In May".
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  1. Gordon Borrell from Borrell Associates, July 1, 2025 at 10:37 a.m.

    Wondering about the "tepid" assessment since the data from the charts don't seem to support it. From what I can see, it appears that every spring since March 2017 (with the exception of 2020) has seen higher growth than the previous. Perhaps every spring is considered tepid compared with the August/December spikes? Confused.

  2. Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., July 1, 2025 at 10:43 a.m.

    @Gordon Borrell: Tepid in the context of monthly year-over-year expansion and in terms of being in line with a series of 2025 forecast downgrades by the major agency holding company forecasting teams.


  3. DJ Condon from Netflix, July 1, 2025 at 11:17 a.m.

    Last month the story was about how April was the slowest month in 19 months, with 1.7% growth. But not in this chart April is at 3.4% growth, and historic months look different as well. Was a consistent methodology used here?

    https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/406264/ad-growth-decelerates-again-april-weakest-in-19-m.html

  4. Joe Mandese from MediaPost Inc., July 1, 2025 at 11:31 a.m.

    @DJ Condon: That's because Guideline continuously updates each month's index based on real-time reconcilations. Usually, it only impacts the most recent month/s. We explained that methodology here: when Guideline began providing that data.

    https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/368000/ad-economy-rose-102-in-september-expansion-cont.html

    So each month's column is accurate based on an analysis of the most current view of the data. Normally, there's not that much of a variance.

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