• by Joe Mandese , 6 hours ago

The outlook for U.S. ad spending has improved markedly this year, according to revised estimates forecast this morning by Madison and Wall. The publisher and consultancy has boosted its forecast for total U.S. ad growth in 2026 to 10.2%, an expansion of 1.3 points from the 8.9% increase it benchmarked for the U.S. ad economy in its year-end 2025 forecast.

Excluding political ad spending, which is M&W's preferred way of looking at underlying growth, the U.S. ad market growth expands 1.5 points to +8.1% from its benchmark of +6.6% in December 2025.

The upgrade comes despite tumultuous geopolitical conditions and questionable macroeconomic ones, suggesting a further decoupling of the U.S. advertising marketplace from the general economy.

"While the historical relationship between economic growth and advertising has weakened in recent years, we still view consumer spending as a key input into overall advertising growth," M&W's analysts wrote, citing "evidence" pointing to "minor softening around the edges, but no clear inflection point" of a U.S. economic downturn.

M&W's upgrade, and the inclusion of Winterberry Group's recent 2026 forecast release, actually reduces MediaPost's composite of reputable ad industry forecasts up to an average 2026 expansion of +8.0%, own 0.8 point from +8.8% in our last update in February.